General practice across the UK is facing chronic underfunding and a drive to replace GPs with workforce trained to a lower standard. We have a UK wide crisis, and each nation faces the same challenges of workforce, workload and demand and massive funding gaps. These issues manifest themselves slightly differently in each nation but remain the core challenges to be addressed.
Our priorities
Crisis in general practice
GPs and practices across the four nations are still experiencing unprecedented pressure following COVID-19 with declining GP numbers, rising demand and workload pressures, recruitment and retention issues, the major scale of the NHS backlog and knock-on effects for patients. GPCUK are encouraging practices to adhere to safe working guidance in their nation, to help practices prioritise their limited capacity to deliver safe, high-quality care.
Read about the pressures general practice is under across the UK.
Read the safe working guidance:
GP pensions and annual allowance
The BMA’s Pensions Committee represents all BMA members across the UK and has carried out extensive lobbying on pension taxation, which resulted in positive changes to annual allowance and lifetime allowance in the Spring 2023 budget. The committee continues to monitor the situation and highlight the detrimental impact that re-introducing or reforming pension tax may have on doctors.
The pension pages on the BMA website offer information and guidance for GPs and the BMA’s Pensions Department are available to offer support to members at [email protected]
Controlling workload in general practice
We are proposing a workload control strategy to enable general practice to improve quality and safety, publicise reasonable safe workload limits and provide practices with practical tools to control workload.
GPC UK
GPC UK consists of six component committees: GPC England, GPC Scotland, GPC Wales, Northern Ireland GPC, Sessional GPs committee and GP Registrars committee. These committees have delegated responsibility for taking forward much of the work on behalf of GPs across the UK, including negotiations with the respective governments.
- GPC England: BMA general practitioners committee England
- Scottish GPC: BMA general practitioners committee Scotland
- GPC Wales: BMA general practitioners committee Wales
- Northern Ireland GPC: BMA general practitioners committee Northern Ireland
- Sessional GPs Committee: BMA sessional GPs committee
- GP Registrars Committee: BMA GP registrars committee
Our people
Chair: Katie Bramall-Stainer
Deputy Chair: Frances O’Hagan
Executive team:
Iain Morrison, chair of GPC Scotland
Gareth Oelmann, chair of GPC Wales
Mark Steggles, chair of Sessional GPs
Victoria McKay, co-chair of GP Registrars
Non-voting members: Ex officio
President, Dr Mary McCarthy
Chair of the representative body, Latifa Patel
Chair of council, Philip Banfield
Deputy Chair of council, Emma Runswick
Treasurer, Trevor Pickersgill
Voting Members: Ex officio
Chair of the UK LMC conference, Matt Mayer
Deputy chair of the UK LMC conference, Alastair Taylor
Elected by the annual representative meeting 2024
England
Samuel Parker
Surendra Kumar
Lucy-Jane Davis
Danielle McSeveney
Mark Coley
Amy Small
Tilna Tilakkumar
Scotland
Stuart Blake
Wales
Om Aggarwal
Northern Ireland
Andrew Wilson
Elected by the UK LMC conference
Andrew Buist
David Wrigley
Manu Agarwal
Simon Minkoff
Gerard McHale
Anwar Tufail
Voting nominees of other bodies
Medical Women’s Federation
Caroline Delves
Medical Practitioners' Union (two representatives)
Jackie Applebee
Tom Riddington
British International Doctors Association
Rakesh Sharma
Under-represented groups (voting members)
Prison doctors
Bethan Roberts
GP within first five years post CCT
Caroline Rodgers
Non-voting nominees of other bodies:
Royal College of General Practitioners - Victoria Tzortziou-Brown and Saqib Anwar
Wales
Gareth Oelmann
Ian Harris
Sara Bodey
England
Katie Bramall-Stainer
Samira Anane
Julius Parker
Scotland
Iain Morrison
Al Miles
Chris Black
Northern Ireland
Frances O’Hagan
Ciaran Mullan
Conor Moore
Sessional GPs
Mark Steggles
Krishan Aggarwal
Veno Suri
GP Registrars
Victoria McKay
Cheska Ball
Esizaze Ozekhome-Mike
Policy Groups
Policy Lead for Representation – Rachel Ali
Policy Lead for Education and Training – Sarah Matthews
Equalities Champion – Lucy-Jane Davies
GPC UK's policy groups focus on specific workstreams, and deliver work on behalf of GPC UK. You can find out more about our policy groups and their work below.
Representation
The representation policy group leads on all matters related to representation of GPs in the BMA, democratic accountability, representation of GP principals, sessional GPs and GP trainees in GPC structures and representation of historically marginalised groups in GPC structures include but not limited to female GPs, GPs from ethnic minority backgrounds and disabled GPs.
Contact us: [email protected]
Education and training
The Education and training policy group leads on all education and training issues of relevance to the general practice workforce.
Contact us: [email protected]
Our meetings
The UK GPC meets twice a year to discuss the latest issues facing general practice. These meetings are open to GPC members, however, the committee also welcomes observers from LMCs (local medical committees).
LMCs interested in sending an observer to a GPC meeting should contact the GPC office to arrange a suitable date. All travel and other expenses for LMC observers must be met by the relevant LMC. A maximum of three LMC observers may attend any one meeting.
Meeting dates:
- Thursday 17 October 2024
- Thursday 6 March 2025
All meetings take place from 10am to 5pm either virtually or at:
BMA House
Tavistock Square
London
WC1H 9JP
For more information about GPC meetings, email [email protected]
How to join
There are many advantages to becoming involved in our committees. You can actively influence BMA policy-making and negotiations, represent your colleagues' voices and develop your leadership skills.
Each committee has a few routes to becoming an elected member. In the case of GPC UK, these are:
- Seats/term - every year, a third of the 43 UK regions elect a representative for a three-session term.
- Timeline - elections are usually held in February or March.
- Eligibility - all GPs who BMA members are eligible to stand if they live or work in the relevant regions. All GPs can vote in this election.
- Seats/term - every year, seven delegates of the LMC conference are elected to GPC UK for a one-session term.
- Timeline - elections are held at the LMC conference in May.
- Eligibility - only LMC conference delegates can stand and vote in this election.
- Seats/term - every year, elections for 10 seats on GPC UK take place for a one-session term.
- Timeline - the nomination period opens a month before ARM, and voting closes a few days after ARM.
- Eligibility - all UK GPs BMA members can stand for election but only ARM delegates can vote.
The election section below is kept up to date with details about any running elections, so make sure you keep checking it throughout the year.
Elections
Elections to the GPC are now closed.
Get in touch
If you are interested in finding out more about the work of GPC, email [email protected]
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