GP leaders have reacted in dismay to a proposal from Labour to scrap the partnerships in general practice.

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting also wants to allow the public to refer themselves to specialists, bypassing GPs and saving them time, he said. He confirmed at the weekend that his party would run a public consultation on “phasing out the GP partnership model in favour of salaried GPs”. He told The Times: “I think we need to completely rethink what primary care looks like.”

Royal College of GPs chair Professor Kamila Hawthorne said: “The partnership model of general practice delivers exceptional benefits for the NHS. It allows GP teams to innovate and tailor care and services to their local patient populations, it is extremely good value for money for the NHS because it relies on the goodwill of GP partners going above and beyond, and a recent independent review of the partnership model found it to be a viable one when resourced appropriately.

“GPs are very good at adapting to and managing change, and we are not averse to other models of general practice working alongside the partnership model if they work well for patients – but when properly staffed and resourced, the partnership model does work really well for patients, the NHS and the tax payer, so there would need to be a very good reason to abandon it. No model of general practice will be sustainable without sufficient numbers of GPs and other practice staff, and that is what is lacking.”

Dr Kieran Sharrock, acting chair of the British Medical Association’s GP committee in England, said: “We agree with Mr Streeting that the GP contract needs to be revamped, to enable the most efficient, cost-effective part of the NHS to thrive. This shouldn’t be about reinventing the wheel though, when we know people value the continuity of care that their GP practice should be able to provide through the partnership model.”

Speaking to Sky News yesterday Labour leader Keir Starmer used GP partnerships to justify the NHS using private health care service. He said : “Outsourcing of some issues and functions I don’t think has been very effective but if you take the NHS, the NHS has always used GPs in private practice, that’s always been part of it. For many, many years the NHS has referred NHS patients to the private sector to have operations, hip operations, knee operations, etc. I think we could be more effective at that but I’m not talking about privatising the NHS.”

In his interview Streeting added: “There have always been people within the system who oppose fundamental change which, decades later, is widely accepted. I’m always prepared to work with people. We’re going to be actively consulting on this. I recognise it will be a big change. I want to listen to the profession and take people with us but, most importantly, I want to get this right for patients. The NHS is so broken, we do have to think radically.”