Another Downing Street ‘own goal’ as row over family doctors intensifies

The Government appears to be panicking over the backlash from doctors at its plan for super-clinics. The issue is in danger of becoming more damaging to the Government than the row over the extension of pre-charge detention for suspected terrorists, which the public generally supports.

The BMA is due to hand in a petition to Downing Street on Thursday signed by thousands of patients objecting to the 'threat to close' their local GPs' surgeries in favour of super-clinics - called polyclinics by the Government - which they say will duplicate existing surgeries but will be more remote from the people they serve.

The Local Medical Committees that cover the whole country are holding their conference on Thursday and Friday and are calling on ministers to drop the idea.

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, has shown he is rattled by accusing the GPs of lying. He has also ordered his junior ministers Ann Keen, Ben Bradshaw and Prof Ara Darzi, the consultant-turned-health minister responsible for the proposals, to brief Labour backbenchers on why the GPs are wrong.

Labour MPs believe the trouble is that if the public are given the choice of believing their local trusted family doctor or Alan Johnson, the GP wins every time. Labour MP Ian Gibson said: "This is another own goal. How many more own goals do we have to give away before the Government wakes up?"

Dopey MPs who are facing the wrath of their constituents at the prospect that some GP surgeries may close down to make way for the new super-clinics have been fed 'top lines' to take on the doorstep. These include: there is no national plan to establish polyclinics and the media are to blame for 'scaremongering'; these are new services, in addition to existing GP practices.

Key messages Labour MPs are told to parrot include: 'Patients tell us that access to GP services is a real issue - they want to see doctors' surgeries opening at evenings and weekends.' That ignores the fact that the GPs have already reluctantly agreed to provide more personalised cover at weekends and in the evenings.

Brown can do without a damaging battle with family doctors, but again he is being accused by his backbenchers of not listening to the warning signs. Just as he ignored them on the abolition of the 10p tax band.

THE MOLE: POLYCLINICS

FIRST POSTED JUNE 10, 2008