Doctors’ leader calls on Hunt to stop using GPs as scapegoats

The chairman of the BMA’s General Practitioners Committee has called on the government to end its attacks on the profession and to stop blaming GPs for the ongoing pressure on hospitals’ accident and emergency departments.

In a defiant keynote speech to GPs at the annual conference of local medical committees in London, Laurence Buckman accused the health secretary for England, Jeremy Hunt, of “spouting rubbish” and of using the NHS as a “political weapon” at a time when “the future of the health service is under real threat.”

In a fierce response to recent criticism from the health secretary, who has blamed recent pressure on emergency …