Health secretary Wes Streeting has slammed what he called extraordinarily naive and self-defeating” general practitioners in a speech to the BMA.
Streeting was speaking at the union’s special representative meeting on Sunday 14 September, where BMA members debated the government’s 10 year plan for the NHS.
BMA representatives passed a motion supporting GPs to re-enter into dispute with the government over the 10 year plan,1 warning that the plan posed an “existential threat” to the GP partnership model and the “very concept of the family doctor.”
The BMA’s General Practitioners Committee (GPC) for England ended its previous dispute with the government earlier this year after ministers formally agreed to negotiate a completely new national contract for GPs by 2028.2
Streeting also pleaded with medics to be “friends not foes” with the government, claiming that further action by doctors risked the NHS itself.
“The alternative is strikes continue to hold back the NHS’s recovery, the costs of industrial action slow down investment in new technology, equipment, and additional specialty places, the changes that we all agree need to be made are blocked, and patients continue to be failed,” he said.
“From there the public will conclude that Labour …
