Labour pledges to review ARRS and cut GP red tape

Labour has pledged to review the additional roles reimbursement scheme (ARRS) and cut GP bureaucracy if the party wins next week’s general election.

Doctor leaders have called for the addition of GPs to the scheme as it gives a ‘perverse incentive’ for PCNs to hire less-qualified healthcare professionals in the place of doctors, having inadvertently created an unforeseen GP employment crisis.

Now shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has said he will review the scheme, should he become the next health secretary, a Labour Party spokesperson confirmed to Pulse.

The party also told Pulse it will ‘consult with GPs’ regarding what unnecessary GP bureaucracy needs to be cut. This would include looking at the wellbeing QOF indicator to reduce GP burnout risk that was introduced last year, Pulse understands.

And, in order to fulfil its commitment to ‘bring back the family doctor’ and offer GP continuity of care where patients want this, the party confirmed that a financial incentive would be brought in for practices.

It said its commitment to update and improve the NHS App would come from within existing funds for digital transformation and IT, however.

And its promises to train more GPs are in line with the NHS’s own long-term workforce plan, which the party stressed it helped to bring about.

The party has previously said that it wants to increase the share of NHS funding for primary care but, asked by Pulse, the party would not be drawn on a timeframe for this.

It would also not commit to tearing up the unpopular 2024/25 GP contract, which is subject to a dispute between NHS England and the BMA, with GP partners currently being balloted on collective action.

According to the party’s election manifesto, published earlier this month, ‘GPs are the front door to the health service for most people’, with ‘excellent primary care’ the ‘key to earlier diagnosis’. However it claimed that ‘too often it is not possible to get an appointment, so Labour will reform the system’.

It has said this will happen by trialling ‘neighbourhood health centres’ which would have GPs and other community health staff ‘under one roof’.

Mr Streeting said: ‘Labour will provide the investment and reform needed to get patients seen on time again and bring back the family doctor.

‘In 2024, patients should not have to queue up at 8am on the phone to book an appointment, or worse still queue around the block. We will end the 8am scramble by allowing patients to easily book appointments to see the doctor they want, in the manner they choose. But that change will only happen if people vote for the NHS and vote Labour on 4 July.’

A Cogora survey has shown that the issues surrounding GP recruitment is the key item which GPs wish the new Government to focus on.