Hello all,

Welcome to the June 2024 edition of the Rebuild General Practice newsletter, coming a week after the country went to the polls to elect 650 new MPs and a new Government was formed.

Below, you can catch up on what the campaign has been up to over the last six weeks and get a flavour of what’s to come in July.

Please circulate this with colleagues and let them know that if they’d like to sign up to our mailing list, just drop a line to hello@rebuildgp.co.uk.

All the best,

The Rebuild GP team

Campaign activity: June 2024

Six weeks of general election action

Open letter

Back in May, the Rebuild General Practice campaign wrote an open letter to political and party leaders.

The letter urged leaders to respond to the campaign’s call to make general practice a political priority. The three core asks of the campaign: GP retention, fairer funding, and greater autonomy – were highlighted to show the areas that require their immediate focus.

The letter was signed by the majority of LMCs across England, Scotland, and Wales – 98 to be exact. The letter was sent to party headquarters across Britain to influence the most influential politicians ahead of the election – including the now-Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer.

The impact of over 80% of LMCs speaking with one voice is immeasurable – it shows unity among the profession and a real desire to work with Government to fix the crisis once and for all.

Getting the campaign’s letter in front of Labour leaders, on top of months of Labour influencing in anticipation of the new government, has truly paid off. Just days into government, Labour has set out plans that directly respond to one of the campaign’s core asks – fair funding. This week, Wes Streeting announced that he would redirect funds from hospitals to primary care, stating the crisis in primary care is an absolute priority for government – more on this below.

Weekly grassroots activations

Int he lead up to the general election, grassroots campaigning took centre stage as candidates focused on winning over constituents. The campaign capitalised on this moment, creating resources for GPs to take a series of actions:

1. Week 1: Sign our open letter

2. Week 2: Submit a question to TV debates

3. Week 3: Attend your local hustings

4. Week 4: Write to your local candidates

5. Week 5: Write to your local newspaper

6. Week 6: Send the open letter to Party HQs

A highlight of this campaigning period was Dr Melinda Crème attending Channel 4’s health debate, ‘NHS in Crisis?’, hosted by Krishnan Guru-Murthy. She spoke directly to politicians on national television about what is needed from government – you can revisit the conversation here.

Thanks to all of you who took part in one or all of these actions – we’d love to hear from your experiences via hello@rebuildgp.co.uk.

Grassroots media

As always, Rebuild General Practice has been working with GPs and LMCs to secure and respond to press opportunities. Please continue to reach out to us if you require media briefing support or advice.

One of June’s media highlights was Dr Gaurav Gupta’s interview with BBC News.

Dr Gupta highlighted that patients and GPs are on the same side, wanting continuity of care within the profession. He emphasised that the issues we are seeing today are due to general practice being under resourced, under funded and a declining number of GPs within the workforce. Dr Gupta stated that we need to see greater funding, a focus on retention and more autonomy given to GPs on the ground to address the crisis.

The new Government's first week

Our letter to Wes Streeting

Last Friday, the new Prime Minister announced the make-up of his cabinet, including the expected appointment of Wes Streeting as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.

The campaign immediately shared a pre-written letter with the new Health Secretary, emphasising the campaign’s openness and desire to work with him on addressing the crisis in general practice, and making clear what needs to happen in order to do so. This includes measures mentioned within Labour’s manifesto, such as care in the community and preventative care, as well as our core asks of a retention plan, fairer funding, and greater autonomy through the elimination of ringfenced funding.

We will also be writing to the new Minister for Primary Care upon their appointment, and have identified our top priority new MPs to engage.

Wes Streeting’s announcements

Earlier this week, Wes Streeting made his first official visit in his capacity as Health Secretary. He chose to visit a GP surgery, emphasising his commitment to making the crisis in general practice a priority.

This was just the start of a string of announcements made by Streeting this week, one of which was a key policy around diverting billions of pounds from secondary to primary care.

Obviously, this is a huge win for general practice and GPs, and reflective of the pressure placed on the Labour Party by the campaign and grassroots GPs over the past few months and years. Labour’s manifesto promised to bring care back into the community and prioritised the return of the family doctor, and we have now seen the first concrete steps to doing this.

With such a fruitful first few days in Government, we now turn to pressuring Wes Streeting and his department to addressing more specific issues, such as implementing a retention plan, specifics around funding and a consistent uplift, and greater autonomy through eliminating ringfenced funding.

Streeting was also present at the Tony Blair Institute’s Future of Britain conference on Tuesday, where he said he saw the Department for Health and Social Care as a vehicle for economic growth, as opposed to a department that simply asks the Treasury for money. There is definitely more conversation to be had around this point, but the announcements from this week are a positive first step in rebuilding GP.

Finally, Streeting has launched an independent investigation into the state of the NHS, which will provide ‘raw and honest assessment’ of issues facing health service. The investigation will be chaired by Professor Lord Varzi, a lifelong surgeon and former health minister, and its findings will feed into government’s ten-year plan to radically reform the health service.

Action you can take in July 2024

Coming soon: Write to your new MP

With 650 new and returning MPs being sworn into the House of Commons earlier this week, this presents a brand-new opportunity for political outreach for the Rebuild General Practice campaign. Over half of new MPs are new to their role and will be angling for causes to champion. That’s why we are asking you to get in touch with your MP – new or old – to ask them to meet with GPs to discuss how they can help in our mission to Rebuild.

We will be in touch soon with all the materials and templates you need – stay tuned.

Tell us your stories

Complete this short survey to help us tell your stories: here.

Over the next few weeks, the campaign will be doing a big push around telling real-life GP stories. We have a new Government, but the issues in general practice remain, for now. We need to bring the crisis to life, making it easy for the media to cover your stories and difficult for politicians to look away.

That’s why we want to hear from you:

• How has your life been affected by the pressures in general practice?

• Tell us about an unusual day at work or situation you had to deal with.

• How have you and/or your colleagues gone above and beyond to support your patients and community?

If you or colleagues have stories you want the world to know about, please help us to get your voices heard by submitting a response to the form linked above. All the questions in the survey are optional - but the more we know, the more we can work with you to represent general practice as accurately as possible.