A government minister has been accused of planning to close thousands of practices.

According to health minister David Mowat, England will eventually have just 1,500 super-hubs for general practice.

Speaking to MPs about primary care in Essex, earlier this week Mr Mowat said the best arrangement for primary care was when practices were in hubs of “35,000 to 40,000 people.”

This would mean primary care being delivered through some 1,500 super-hubs across England.

Mr Mowat said: “They are able to employ pharmacists and physios and do more things at scale than they could as a single GP practice or as a practice of two or three GPs, which has historically been the norm.”

The Daily Telegraph today quotes him as going on to say: “We are migrating over time from a position where we have 7,500 GP practices to one with something more like 1,500 super-hubs,” although this is not recorded in Hansard.

Mr Mowat went on to talk about practice Saturday opening, stating: “We are determined to achieve that by 2020, although we are starting from a difficult position in Essex, given the lack of GPs generally. Only by collaboration and working across practices will we make progress.

“The model of a single GP practice — and such practices still exist—is self-evidently not viable and does not allow us to do some of the things that we need to in primary care, such as employing pharmacists and other such disciplines.”

Royal College of GPs chair Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard said the extent of the change seemed “extreme.”

Dr Richard Vautrey, British Medical Association GP committee deputy chair said: “The connection that local GPs have with patients is one of things patients value most highly – we break that at our peril.”