GPs have voted against implementing nine to five working hours – although they have demanded limits on practice workloads.

The conference of local medical committees, meeting yesterday, was asked to vote on whether to demand that GP core hours be restricted to 40 hours a week. After a stormy debate, it voted to reject the proposal, with opponents arguing that reducing core hours would only increase workloads.

Dr Shaba Navi, from Avon, proposing the reduction in core hours, said that GPs have been subject to “gaslighting” recently. She said, quoted in The BMJ: “With all this fuss going on, you’d think this motion was about asking for a company Ferrari for every GP in the land. It is merely requesting to cover 40 hours in our core contract instead of the current 52.5. But the outrage and the reactions to this motion just goes to show how gaslit we are as a profession, that we have to agree we are of no value and should be working 12 and a half hours more than everyone else.”

Despite rejecting the reduction in core hours, delegates voted overwhelmingly for changes to their contract to include workload limits, arguing this would protect practice staff and patients. The conference also called for specific actions to reduce workload, such as ceasing to require GPs to write sick notes or medical reports for gyms.

Dr Rachel McMahon, from Cleveland, said: “There is guidance on safe work in general practice. It tells us we should be having 15-minute appointments and a maximum of 25 contacts per day. The average is 37 — that is quite a lot more than 25. Perhaps we need contractual working limits similar to lorry drivers. Perhaps we need mandatory rest periods and maximum work imposed on us.”

British Medical Association GP committee chair Dr Philip White told the conference: “We face a daunting, exhausting, and growing mountain of unmet need in our communities. We have thousands more patients on our lists. We regularly break records for numbers of appointments booked and patient contacts. And we have to do all of this with a dwindling workforce and our hands tied behind our back by a lack of resource, endless cuts in community services, and the blockages across secondary care workforce because the crisis we face in general practice is particularly severe.”