The four nations LMC conference took place on 10 and 11 May 2022 in York. The full agenda, including voting and election results, can be read here, the five motions proposed by LMCs from the Londonwide LMCs’ area are listed in full below, including the result of the vote on them and a timestamp for when the debate starts in the BMA’s recording of each day.
Motions or parts of motions can either be ‘carried’,’ taken as a reference’ or ‘lost’. Carried means they are approved by the Conference and form the basis of BMA General Practitioners Committee (GPC) policy, taken as a reference means they should be considered by GPC when formulating policy, and lost means the conference does not approve them and they do not affect GPC policy.
Tuesday 10 May
Motion 6. Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster:
That conference instructs GPC UK to conduct a comparison review across the four nations of the impact of the outcomes of their contractual negotiations on the stability and sustainability of GP practices, including GP: patient ratios, retention of GPs and PNs, real investment in essential services, and patients’ satisfaction with GP services.
This motion was carried in full, the debate can be seen at 00:30:00 into this recording of day one of the conference, with Lisa Harrod-Rothwell proposing the motion.
Motion 15. Agenda Committee, proposed by City and Hackney:
That conference recognises that the increasing patient demand for appointments and the escalating challenges of managing more complex patients all lead to greater workload pressures and:
- supports the BMA model contract for salaried GPs
- recommends that the BMA salaried GP model contract is urgently reviewed
- recommends that the BMA gives clearer guidance on how GP sessions may be divided up into specific working periods, by mutual agreement of the sessional GP and the practice
- advises that the GPC determines and disseminates the average sessional rate for GPs across the UK, across the four nations and at borough level, to facilitate practice-level negotiations and place based discussions.
Part one of this motion was taken as a reference, the remaining three parts were carried, the debate can be seen at 4:51:30 in, with Vinay Patel proposing the motion.
Wednesday 11 May
Motion 22. Agenda Committee, proposed by Westminster:
That conference is deeply concerned by the rise in health inequalities in our communities and calls upon GPC to:
- conduct a review into the impact of current national and local general practice funding models including funding formulae and outcomes payments
- negotiate enhanced funding for GP practices serving areas of significant deprivation to resource addressing the additional workload
- negotiate a requirement for a health impact analysis to be carried out by commissioners when any new housing or care homes are located in these areas of deprivation
- negotiates for fairer funding of vaccinations which does not financially discriminate against practices with low vaccine uptake.
This motion was carried in full, the debate can be seen at 01:01:33 into this recording of day two of the conference, with Lisa Harrod-Rothwell proposing the motion.
Motion 23. Newham:
That conference believes that recent digital innovations have increased health inequalities for our most vulnerable patients and:
- instructs GPC to insist in all negotiations that individual practices have the right to determine the most appropriate form of consultation to best serve their patient’s needs
- calls on the UK government to investigate the impact of recent digital innovations on health inequalities.
This motion was carried in full, the debate can be seen at 01:19:25 in, with Tamara Hibbert proposing the motion.
Motion 25. Sutton:
This conference recognises that health care delivery in general practice is adversely impacted by the shortcomings of existing GP estates, including insufficient consultation rooms and meeting rooms and:
- calls on the NHS in each of the four nations to investigate the impact of current GP estate limitations on the effective safe delivery of care and the recruitment of both clinical and nonclinical GP staff
- calls on the NHS in each of the four nations to investigate the impact of the limited number of disability adapted GP consultation rooms, on the clinical care of disabled patients
- instructs GPC to negotiate with the NHS in each of the four nations, to urgently provide much needed new funding to develop GP estates.
This motion was carried in full, the debate can be seen at 03:08:00 in, with Asiya Yunus proposing the motion.
Motion 26. Agenda Committee, proposed by Redbridge:
That conference believes that all additional services delivered by general practice should be adequately remunerated and:
- calls for the end of the postcode lottery of LES contracts and requests a centrally negotiated menu of appropriately funded additional services
- that the GPC negotiates with the four nations’ NHS, to ensure that general practice participation in locally negotiated contracts is not dependent on sign up to the voluntary component of national contracts.
- requires agreement by the NHS in each of the devolved nations that all calculations for projected costs of service delivery should be transparent and available for scrutiny and comment by GPC or LMCs (depending on whether a national or local service is involved)
- funding calculations should allow for GP remuneration at a commensurate rate to the cost of locum GPs
- requires GPC to develop a cost calculator, agreed with the four devolved nations’ departments of health, defining the unit cost for general practice which should then be used in all local negotiations.
The first four parts of this motion were carried, the final part was lost. the debate can be seen at 03:19:00 in, with with Shabnam Quraishi proposing the motion.
Election results
The Conference also elected representatives to a number of posts:
Chair of UK Conference
- Katie Bramall-Stainer
Deputy Chair of UK Conference
- Matt Mayer
General practitioners committee UK
- Lisa Harrod-Rothwell
- Laura-Jane Evans
- Manu Agrawal
- Zishan Syed
- Paul Cundy
- Rachel Ali
- Charles Strachan
- Mairi Elizabeth Reid (Early career GP to be co-opted on to GPC)