The General Practitioners’ Committee (GPC) is warning practices not to sign a new version of the General Medical Services (GMS) contract, as NHS England has admitted that an ‘erroneous’ contract has been sent to some GPs, which would make it impossible for them to take legal action against their local area team.

A version of the contract circulated by the West Midlands local area team to around 300 practices has excluded the option for practices to sign as non-NHS bodies. This means that any practice signing it would waive their right to challenge any contractual disputes via the courts.

The GPC is investigating if this is a regional or national matter and whether the wording was intentional or a mistake. In the interim, it recommends that practices do not sign anything until they have checked the wording of what they have been sent.

In a statement the Local Medical Committees (LMC) has said that the LMC and GPC advice to practices has always been to elect not to be an NHS body, as if the practice elects to be an NHS body it forgoes its right to opt to have contract disputes dealt with through the courts, rather than solely through the NHS disputes procedure.

Meanwhile, NHS England has said that it is up to GPs themselves to check for the mistake, but a spokesperson for the organisation said that it would like to stress that the new GMS contracts were not purposely manipulated to ensure GP practices agree to terms that they are not happy with.

The wording in the erroneous contract is as follows: ‘[t]he Contractor has elected to be regarded as a health service body for the purposes of section 9 of the 2006 Act. Accordingly, this Contract is an NHS contract’.