Ministers dispute doctors' polyclinic petition

The government has defended its plans to introduce polyclinics after more than one million people signed a petition to protect their local GP surgery.

Ministers want to create 150 'supersurgeries' in England, offering GP services alongside hospital appointments and treatments.

But at least 1.2 million people have signed a petition from the British Medical Association, which is concerned that the move will threaten local surgeries.

Dr Laurence Buckman, the chairman of the BMA's GPs' committee said the document would "deliver a stark message to the prime minister" when it was handed to Downing Street on Thursday.

However the prime minister said allegations that GP surgeries would close were "ill-founded" and "completely wrong".

"There are 5,000 more general practitioners than there were 10 years ago, so the numbers of GPs are not falling, they're actually rising," he told a Downing Street press briefing.

"Equally we are investing more money in the GP service. Whether it be GPs themselves or whether it be health centres with GPs working there.

"The issue is, we want GPs to open longer hours and we want them to open at weekends. And if that is not possible in some cases we want to provide other sources of medical care."

'Message'

Earlier Dr Buckman had said: "If the government won't listen to you, their doctors, then surely it will listen to the 1.2 million men and women who call for a halt to the plans to promote the use of commercial companies in general practice.

"Voters don't want funding to move from GP practices to commercial companies who are accountable primarily to shareholders rather than patients. They want to be treated as patients, not customers.

"My message to Gordon Brown is this: 'Whatever you think of GPs, take note of what your electorate thinks. Work with us to improve the service, not against us, and ignore at your peril the wishes of the most important people in the NHS - the patients'."

But health minister Ben Bradshaw said: "I am not surprised the BMA have collected so many signatures given the misleading and mendacious nature of their campaign.

"If I were to run a campaign making false claims that something terrible was about to happen, a lot of people would sign my petition too.

"We have received widespread anecdotal evidence of patients feeling pressurised to signing the petition as well as practices telling their patients blatant inaccuracies about local plans.

"I have written today to Dr Hamish Meldrum of the BMA calling on him to disown the false statements being made and to condemn any kind of pressure being put on patients, when they feel at their most vulnerable, to support the BMA's misleading campaign."

The news comes after the Conservatives claimed there was a funding shortfall in the government's plans for new polyclinics.

The Tories published figures on Wednesday which they said showed a £1.4bn "black hole" in the Department of Health's finances.