Doctors are to reconsider industrial action over changes to general practice, it has emerged.

The issue will be a key debate at the British Medical Association conference later this month. Doctors voted last year for practices to take “industrial action” over the government’s attitude towards them. At the time GPs were angered by a government “rescue plan” for general practice which they had not agreed and which threatened league tables of performance.

The latest proposal comes from the BMA’s London regional council and calls on the BMA to set itself against government policy on general practice. It refers to contractual changes that were imposed earlier this year and calls for the dismantling of the primary care networks.

They pose an “existential threat” to GPs as independent contractors, the London-based doctors say. They propose that the BMA organise practices to withdraw from primary care networks next year. It adds that conference should instruct “GPC England to act upon the GP ballot of 2021 and to organise opposition to the imposition of the new contact including industrial action if necessary.”