The British Medical Association (BMA) is ‘no longer in dispute’ with the government and NHS England, and has paused collective action after accepting a GP contract deal for 2025/26.
Last week, the union’s GP Committee in England agreed a deal ‘in principle’ which will see almost £800m invested into the global sum, as part of a £969m total funding uplift for general practice.
This means the GPCE ‘will now pause collective action’ to work with the government over the coming weeks to ‘secure the necessary assurances’, including a commitment by mid-March for a wholesale renegotiation of the contract within this parliamentary term.
GP practices across England had been taking collective action – including limiting patient contacts, declining non-contractual work and refusing to sign new contracts with NHS England or local integrated care boards – since August.
According to a Nursing in Practice survey, almost a quarter of general practice nurses (GPNs) reported that the action was having a negative effect on patient care.
Though half (50.5%) of respondents had also said they ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ agreed with the action being taken.
On Friday, the BMA said many of the options on its GP collective action menu ‘will potentially be superseded by the 25/26 contract agreement’, and so the union will publish updated guidance to ‘provide the necessary clarity’ for practices.
Despite this pause to national collective action, GP leaders encouraged practices to continue to work safely and to address commissioning gaps, which should be ‘renegotiated locally’.
In an update to its guidance, the union said: ‘GPCE’s dispute with government may be over – contingent upon written assurances around the renegotiation of the national GP practice contract for England in this Parliament, but the focus at a local and system-level continues.
‘Patient care must be protected from gaps in local commissioning arrangements. Practices who are undertaking such work should either be resourced, to ensure patient care is sustainable or consider serving notice on them to ICBs.’
The GPCE said its agreement to the 2025/26 contract is conditional on the government’s commitment to a ‘full renegotiation of the new national contract’ by the end of Labour’s parliamentary term.
National GP leaders said: ‘We have stipulated that this commitment must be confirmed in writing ahead of the Special LMC Conference on Wednesday, 19 March 2025.
‘The BMA is no longer in dispute with the government and NHS England and more guidance around this will be forthcoming in the weeks ahead.
‘As you’d expect from your union, the BMA continues to recommend ways for practices to manage patient care safely and ensure long-term sustainability.’
The union did however warn that if negotiations for a totally new GP contract fail, the GPCE ‘will need to potentially discuss re-entering dispute and action escalation again’, noting that this outcome is ‘in nobody’s interest’.
In October, the BMA set out a list of demands for the government to meet in order to bring collective action to an end, including a ‘cast-iron commitment’ to agree a new national GP contract and for practice core funding to rise by at least £40 per patient in 2025/26.
Since collective action began in August, GPs in several areas have come together to serve notice to their ICBs on ‘unfunded work’, with local medical committees (LMCs) coordinating such action.
Some options on the BMA’s collective action menu are also part of its long-standing safe working guidance for practices, which advises GPs to cap patient contacts at 25 per day and to cease ‘all non-contractual work’.
England’s LMCs had previously called on the BMA to ballot the GP profession on taking ‘more significant’ industrial action’, arguing that it was ‘not having enough impact’.
As part of the 2025/26 GP contract, GPNs are also set to be added to the additional roles reimbursement scheme.
And a ‘potential’ chickenpox vaccine programme has also been mooted.
A version of this article was first published by our sister title Pulse
