A LEADING doctor has criticised Government plans to turn GP surgeries into seven day services.

The government wants surgeries to run additional appointments from 8am to 8pm on Saturdays and Sundays, to reduce people attending under pressure A&E departments when they cannot get GP appointments.

Decision makers say extra funding will be made available to those who do decide to take up the seven-day service with surgeries exempt if they can prove the demand for appointments is not there.

Dr Peter Swinyard, who works at Toothill’s Phoenix Surgery, said he was disgusted by the plans.

“It’s unevidenced, unscientific and unsound. It is disappointing that this has come to this," he said.

"I do believe GPs are being blamed for something that isn’t our fault. It’s completely and utterly fictitious that something like this could work.

“It beggars belief that the Government would attack a service that is desperately stretched, trying to provide five day a week service with incredibly limited resources.”

De Swinyard also rubbished claims that extended opening hours for GP surgeries would ease the pressure on A&E

“If people are coming into us at a weekend, this will be for a routine appointment. There is a big difference between that and someone requiring urgent or emergency care,” he said.

“We don’t have enough GPs in the first place and those working in surgeries do not particularly want to commit to weekends as they have families.

"This is not the solution, this is perpetuating the problem and it won’t work.”

The British Medical Association have accused the government of ‘scapegoating’ GPs.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, BMA GP committee chair, said: “Much of the pressure on A&E has nothing to do with general practice: it has to do with seriously ill patients for whom seeing a GP would not prevent a hospital admission.

"These patients are facing delays in being admitted to hospital because of a chronic shortage of beds, as well as delays in discharging elderly patients due to a funding crisis in community and social care.

“This crisis, which was both predictable and avoidable, is the culmination of a decade of underfunding, and a recruitment crisis that has left one in three GP practices unable to fill vacancies.

“This is not the time to deflect blame or scapegoat overstretched GP services, when the fundamental cause of this crisis is that funding is not keeping up with demand.

"Rather than trying to shamelessly shift the blame onto GPs, the Government should take responsibility for a crisis of its own making and outline an emergency plan to get to grips with the underlying cause, which is the chronic under-resourcing of the NHS and social care.”