Labour and RCGP clash over call for general practice funding boost

The chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has defended her plans for general practice after Labour criticised the proposals and in particular the call for a bigger share of the NHS budget and a safety alert system for overwhelmed practices.Wes Streeting, Labour’s health secretary, wrote in the Times on 20 October that the RCGP’s plans offered solutions that were “completely counter to what GPs and patients need.” He said it was “a plan for the managed decline of general practice, not a serious plan to get GPs back on their feet.”1RCGP chair Kamila Hawthorne launched the manifesto at the college’s annual meeting in Glasgow (19 October) with the aim of controlling GPs’ workload, investing in better premises, and increasing the number of doctors.2A key recommendation was the introduction of a national alert system to flag unsafe workload levels and to allow practices to get additional support “before…
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