Helen Salisbury: GP collective action to end unfunded work

Many GPs are not only cross and tired: they’re genuinely worried about the future of their practices. The amount of money available to run a surgery hasn’t kept pace with inflation, and we need a 10.7% rise in the value of the GP contract to restore funding to 2018-19 levels.1More than two thirds of GPs who were eligible to vote took part in an indicative ballot recently, and 98.3% voted for collective action.2 The actions available to GPs to express their anger and dissatisfaction with the latest contract imposition are quite different from the strikes that our colleagues in hospitals have held with such positive results. GP partners hold contracts with the NHS, and if we withdrew our labour we’d be in breach of contract and would be fined or lose our income entirely.Even if we were able to strike it’s not clear that GPs would do so, as our…
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