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Family Doctor Services

We know exactly who is to blame for that—the Government. To be fair to NHS employers and the NHS Confederation, when it came down to it they were overawed by the Government, who put in their own interpretation of their estimate of the QOF—quality and outcomes framework—points that were going to be gathered by GPs. The British Medical Association, to be fair, said pretty clearly that it thought that it would be a higher figure. The difference on the QOF was about 16 per cent.—that is about 160 points, and there is £125 a point, so that is about £20,000 per GP. The Government have therefore ended up spending millions more than they ever intended. That was not simply because they got more out of the contract but because they did not put into their negotiations a proper understanding of the existing practice of GPs before they started to negotiate it.