According to the president of the Royal College of GPs (RCGP), a funding crisis and increased demand for care means that general practice, as patients know it in the UK, is under “severe threat of extinction.”

Dr Maureen Baker said that failing to fund GP practices properly could have an impact on the sustainability of the NHS, as general practice deals with 90 per cent of patient contact and yet receives only 8.39 per cent of the overall NHS budget.

According to the Royal College, funding for general practice in England has been cut by £400m in real terms over the past three years, which, it claims, is a false economy, and while funding has been cut, demand for GP services is actually increasing, from 300 million consultations in 2008 to 340 million in 2012. Dr Baker added that if there is not sufficient funding for the 2014/15 budget rounds then the RCGP has “grave concerns for the sustainability of the NHS.

In October, it published a report showing that £8.5bn had been invested in 2012-13, compared with £8.3bn in 2009-10, which is the equivalent of £8.9bn in 2012-13 prices, and in November it published figures with the National Association for Patient Participation revealing that GP funding across the UK was at a nine-year low.

The figures showed that between 2004-05 and 2011-12, the proportion of the NHS budget spent on general practice had fallen from 9.47 per cent to 7.78 per cent in Scotland and from 8.58 per cent to 7.77 per cent in Wales. Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, the figure dropped from 8.22 per cent in 2010-11 to 8.1 per cent the following year.

The Royal College is therefore urging governments in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast to take action to address what it calls this “huge and historic imbalance in funding”.