Cameron’s pledge on seven day working is branded “empty headline grabbing”

Prime Minister David Cameron has reiterated his pledge to implement full seven day working in the NHS in his first major speech since the general election.

In a speech at a health centre in the West Midlands the re-elected prime minister said that his government would expand access to routine GP and hospital care to allow patients to receive the same service at weekends as they did from Monday to Friday.1 He said that the transformation would be funded from the £8bn (€11bn; $13bn) a year his party had pledged to invest by the end of the parliament to support NHS England’s Five Year Forward View.

But doctors’ leaders said that this funding would be enough only to keep current NHS services running and would not be enough for an expansion to full seven day working. The BMA said that the plans as they stood were uncosted and “empty headline …