GPs' earning more money for working fewer hours

The average GP is putting in 15 per cent fewer hours than three years ago, when surgeries were allowed to opt out of providing evening and weekend care.

However, while doctors' working week is around eight hours shorter, their pay has soared by almost a quarter, the GPs' Workload Survey showed.

The average salary is now more than £100,000.

An influential committee of MPs said this is because Labour "mishandled" the introduction of new contracts.

While these have handed GPs a huge pay rise, their patients are left trying to pick their way through a maze of out-of-hours care options.

Many spend hours trying to contact a doctor in the evening or at the weekend.

Patients who become ill outside surgery opening hours are either diagnosed over the phone, visited at home by an agency doctor or told to visit their local Accident and Emergency.

The lack of evening and weekend surgeries means workers have to take time off to see their GPs - costing the economy £1billion every year.

In March, a study by MPs found that only one in 50 out-of-hours services was meeting targets set to ensure patients get proper treatment.

The damning report, from the Commons Public Accounts committee, said the Government had "thoroughly mishandled" the shake-up of out-of-hours care and only doctors had "done well" out of the changes.

The latest figures, due to be released by the NHS Information Centre tomorrow, will put pressure on Gordon Brown to overhaul out-of-hours care.

He is expected to tell GPs to justify their salaries by seeing patients in the evenings and weekends.

The statistics, taken from a survey of 4,000 practices, have infuriated patients' groups and politicians, with critics saying doctors are putting profits ahead of patients.

Joyce Robins, of Patient Concern, said: "The majority of complaints we have had over the last two years have been about access to GPs.

"Ever since the new contract, access has gone downhill. Most people would say 'My GP is great - if only I could get to see him or her'.

"We had one patient who had to take several half-days off work to see his doctor.

"When he mentioned this, his GP said, 'It's better to be healthy than employed'."

Katherine Murphy of The Patients Association said the elderly and others who value having a rapport with their doctor had been particularly badly served by the new GPs' contract.

She added: "I think GPs would agree they have done very well out of the contract.

"They are working less for a lot more money. The huge pay rises they are getting have not been reflected in the care patients are receiving."

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb called for the controversial contracts to be reviewed.

He added: "Ministers must start talking to doctors' leaders to secure a better deal for patients in the future."

This year it emerged that family doctors "could not believe their luck" when the contracts were negotiated.

The deal, introduced in 2004, allowed them to stop working in the evenings, and on weekends and Bank Holidays, for a mere 6 per cent cut in salary.

This was more than offset by extra payments they were given for meeting targets, such as prescribing a certain amount of cholesterol-lowering statins. Figures released by the NHS Information Centre this month showed that in the first year after the introduction of the contract, GPs' earnings rose by 22.8 per cent.

In England, the average salary was boosted by around £20,000 to £103,654, while one in ten GPs earned more than £150,000.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "We invested significant extra funding in GP services, both to improve services and reward GPs.

"We expect a certain level of these profits to be invested back into their businesses, to bring about further improvements in services for patients, such as longer opening hours or widening the range of services."