GP leaders have defended practices against claims they are failing to open for eight hours a day.

An analysis claimed to show that more than 50% of practices open for less than eight hours a day.

The Daily Telegraph investigation found 1,500 practices with opening times of less than five hours a day.

Under then GP contract, agreed last week, practices that close for half-days will be barred from claiming funding for improving patient access.

The newspaper said it had analysed the opening hours of all practices and found 4,208 opening for less than eight hours a day.

It claimed that limited opening times were linked in some areas to local hospitals facing high pressures on emergency departments.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt told the paper: “Those surgeries that do not even stay open all day need to remember there is a severe impact on the rest of the NHS which expects greater accessibility of services in return for the 14 per cent increase in funding we have promised GPs this parliament.”

But Royal College of GPs chair Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard said: “These figures don’t give the full story of what’s happening in general practice – they only take into account surgery time, not practice opening hours.

“Obviously, a large part of a GP’s work is seeing patients in face to face consultations, but there is a lot more involved in day to day general practice – and just because actual surgeries aren’t taking place, it doesn’t mean patient care isn’t being delivered via telephone or online consultations, or by making home visits.

“There are also vital administrative duties, such as hospital referrals, prescriptions and test analysis that need to be dealt with during the working day, which is growing ever longer for GPs and our teams due to the intense pressures we face as we try to cope with increasing patient demand and complexity.”