A third of GPs earn more than the prime minister, according to figures which Wes Streeting hopes will raise the pressure on the doctors’ union to reverse its “baffling” opposition to online reforms.

Streeting, the health secretary, has been locked in a dispute with the general practice committee of the British Medical Association (BMA) since the start of October. The body opposes measures that force every GP practice in England to make online booking open for “non-urgent appointment requests, medication queries and admin requests” during working hours, saying it lacks the necessary resources.

Streeting said it was “absurd” that booking a GP appointment was often harder than booking a haircut. He dismissed the notion that doctors did not have enough funds or capacity to implement the changes.

Since the implementation of the new rules, GPs have been barred from turning online requests off when they reach a given number or restricting online bookings to a few hours a day.

Last month Streeting used a call by dissident BMA activists urging GPs to deliberately “overwhelm” A&E in protest at wider reforms as an opportunity to attack the union’s leadership, claiming it had not condemned the “dangerous extremism” in question.

Wes Streeting, MP for Ilford North and Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, speaking at the BBC.

Wes Streeting has agreed to a 4 per cent pay award for consultants, speciality doctors, specialists and GPs

IMAGEPLOTTER/ALAMY

On Sunday, Streeting’s department published evidence that a third of GP partners — self-employed doctors who ran their own practice — made more than £175,000 last year. Sir Keir Starmer was entitled to a gross annual salary of £172,153 for the roles of MP and prime minister.

What partners make

The Department of Health stated that one in six GP partners earned more than £225,000 in 2023–24. Over the past half-decade, it said, partner earnings increased by £37,000. Over the past year, the increase was £18,500. The department added that the highest 10 per cent of GP partners earned more than £256,400.

In May Streeting agreed to a 4 per cent pay award for consultants, speciality doctors, specialists and GPs backdated to the previous month.

Last year the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that between 2010 and 2024 earnings across the population “grew at their slowest rate in probably more than 200 years”.

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The figures on GP earnings were based on research by NHS England Digital, which examined anonymised tax data from HMRC self-assessment records.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “It simply isn’t credible for the BMA to say they don’t have the resources to deliver online consultations. This government has invested an extra £1.1 billion in general practice and recruited 2,500 more GPs, precisely so they have the tools to provide a modern service. The BMA signed up to this — it is baffling that they are now trying to turn back time.”

‘Obliterating the 8am rush’

Streeting’s intervention came the day after the NHS revealed that patients submitted 6.5 million online consultation requests in September, up about 50 per cent from September last year.

Josie Matthews, who manages the Steel City practice in Sheffield, claimed that the online reforms to which the BMA was opposed had “obliterated the 8am rush”. She said: “[It] helped get around the issue of people having to ring first thing in the morning to secure an appointment and then call back the next day if none were available.”

She was also quoted by the NHS as saying: “It’s also useful for communicating with patients because it’s secure and quick. For example, if a patient contacts us about a rash their child has, we can ask them to send a photo of it and then the GP can review it and make an immediate judgement on whether they need to come in or urgently go to a hospital.”

A female doctor discusses medication dosage with a male patient.

The BMA is considering legal action to frustrate the reforms, which it claimed could undermine “patient safety” owing to the fact that there was no limit on the number of appointments that could be requested online.

The trade union claimed the measures would “open the floodgates” to unmet need and potentially cause urgent requests to be lost in a sea of demands. It gave Streeting 48 hours to backtrack at the start of October, demanding he implement safeguards and introduce greater flexibility. Streeting rebuffed the offer. Instead he said the BMA had agreed to the plan in the spring and used a Q&A event to declare: “In any kind of reform or change programme you’ll have your leaders and your laggards.”

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Streeting is at war with other sections of the union too. Junior doctors, now also known as resident doctors, are planning to strike between November 14-19 after a similar walkout in July.

Streeting said the action would amount to a “quarter of a billion pounds flushed down the drain by the BMA”.

GPs are not currently scheduled to be balloted on strike action, with their BMA leadership saying the next step would be “legal action to ensure that the most harmful aspects of the government’s policy are reversed”. The BMA said it hoped the health secretary would make such action unnecessary.

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