Representatives of the UK's 35000 GPs have overwhelmingly voted for the continuation of self regulation of the medical profession but called on the current General Medical Council to improve its performance.
At last week's conference of representatives of local medical committees in Manchester, Dr Andrew Stewart, a GP in Cornwall and a member of the GMC, said, “We live in difficult times, with the government keen to control every aspect of our lives.”
He did not dispute that the profession needed regulating, but there was no case, he said, for scrapping self regulation and replacing it with state regulation. If that happened the public would not trust doctors, and he questioned whether the profession would trust itself.
“Do not let self regulation be washed away in a hysteria of political correctness,” he added.
A member of the GMC, Dr Brian Keighley, said that the BMA was sending out the wrong messages with the votes of no confidence in the GMC passed by other craft conferences (10 June, p 1557; 17 June, p 1626).