GPs have moved closer to industrial action after those in partnership suffered a double financial blow in last week’s pay awards.

The British Medical Association rejected the pay award and announced “discussions” around the next steps – including industrial or collective action. This summer’s British Medical Association conference called on practices to withdraw from primary care networks over imposed contractual changes. One analysis suggests the average practice could be £40,000 worse off as a result of the awards, which gave staff 4.5% pay increases but awarded nothing to extra to practices to pay them.

Two GPs, Dr Karthik Bhat and Dr Chandra Kanneganti, put the proposal to consider industrial action to the BMA’s GP committee.

Committee deputy chair Dr Richard Van Mellaerts said: “To put it bluntly, the 4.5% ‘pay rise’ was nothing of the sort, amounting to the wages of hardworking staff being cut by more than 6% in real terms. Meanwhile, the Government has wilfully ignored the pay body’s recommendation to give GPs who run practices any extra funding, meaning they have no means to meet even this small uplift for staff nor to pay for rocketing practice expenses. With inflation pressures set to reach 11%, something has to give. Without understanding and support from Government, practices will fold and patients will have no access to the care that they need. With spiralling costs, record demand and workforce shortages across the board, we know practices across the country are already struggling to provide safe care, and the Government has now actively chosen a path that compromises this further.”

Ruth Rankine, director of primary care at the NHS Confederation, said: “The pay deal feels like a backhanded compliment for primary care – on the one hand, leaders are grateful that hardworking NHS staff have been recognised with the salary increase, but on the other, they are at a loss over how it can be taken forward without more funding. With primary care playing such a vital role during the pandemic and in the Covid-19 vaccination programme, the Government’s response beggars belief. If primary care providers can’t make the pay deal work for their teams, it will do untold damage to their recruitment and retention efforts, at a time when demand from patients is sky high and the Government has committed to bringing in 26,000 additional workers by the next election.

“This will then have a domino effect on the range of services they can provide for their patients, including extended opening hours, inevitably leading to even more pressures across hospitals and other parts of the NHS. If the Government truly wants to tackle the backlogs and support in the NHS – for primary care, right now that means making sure its staff can be paid the recommended wage.”