According to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, the British Medical Association (BMA) is “out of touch” with GPs’ wants and needs, as he says he has yet to meet a doctor who doesn’t want seven day working.

Speaking at the King’s Fund last week, Mr Hunt claimed that all the royal colleges support the Government’s plans for seven-day working and that he was starting to have a good dialogue with the GP profession about the best way to bring the plans to fruition.

The Health Secretary added that his frustration is not with doctors, as the ones he has met have been very enthusiastic. However, he admitted that he felt very frustrated with the BMA, although he acknowledged that putting a seven-day practice into GP services will not be easy.

Despite Mr Hunt’s claims that he has the support of the royal colleges, a spokeswoman for the Royal College of General Practitioners’ (RCGP) said that GPs are already being pushed to their limits in trying to provide a safe five-day service, so the Health Secretary’s speech “sounded alarm bells” for them.

In addition, a spokesman for the General Practitioners’ Committee said that although every doctor works to ensure there is 24/7 access to GP services, as far as he is concerned, very few see the need for a routine care service “on a Sunday afternoon”. That said, he agreed that the Committee has a “very good dialogue and relationship with the Secretary of State and NHS England”.

Meanwhile, an independent report into seven-day working has found that the GP contract contains a number of ‘constraints’ to the rollout of the Government’s plan, as identified by NHS England. These include the Agenda for Change staff pay, consultant and GP contracts and working time, which constrain staffing and create uplifts for weekend work, thus increasing the cost.