Patient power: Over 1m sign petition against Government 'polyclinic' plans

The petition warns the Government against using private firms to run the planned polyclinics.

Successful campaigning by the British Medical Association, which organised the petition in only three weeks, mobilised patients in support of their own GPs.

Dr Laurence Buckman will hand the petition with 1.3million signatures in to Downing Street

But it has set the doctors' union on a collision course with health ministers, who accuse them of scaremongering.

Up to 150 polyclinics could be built in England to deal with thousands of patients, each housing up to 25 GPs and offering extra services such as minor surgery and dentistry.

They have been recommended by Lord Darzi, the health minister carrying out a review of the NHS, and will be put out to tender to private firms as well as local GPs.

Most hospital consultants and family doctors believe the plans will damage patient care.

GPs will condemn them at a BMA conference today in London.

It is feared they could spell the end of small practices run by family doctors, replacing them with an expensive, bureaucratic system that will waste public money.

The Tories believe the plans would see 1,700 GP surgeries shut  -  one in five of the total and many of them in rural areas  -  and force patients to travel three times further for primary care.

They claim there would be a £1.4billion 'black hole' in the Government's finances as a result.

Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA's GPs Committee, will hand the petition with 1.2million signatures in to Downing Street.

He said: 'Voters don't want funding to move from GP practices to commercial companies which are accountable primarily to shareholders rather than patients. They want to be treated as patients, not customers.

'My message to Gordon Brown is this: Ignore at your peril the wishes of the most important people in the NHS  -  the patients.'

The BMA says continuity of care for patients could be damaged because the contracts are being offered on a shortterm basis, typically five years, which could lead to a higher turnover of GPs.

Coventry GP Dr Grant Ingrams said: 'Opening a new commercialised health centre with guaranteed income will undermine the local existing practices with a high chance of their closure.

'We have not had to encourage patients to sign a petition  -  they have asked us how they can protest.'

Health minister Ben Bradshaw said the BMA had run a 'misleading and mendacious' campaign.

He added: 'We have widespread anecdotal evidence of patients feeling pressurised to signing the petition as well as practices telling patients blatant inaccuracies.'

But Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the BMA Council, said: 'The BMA campaign material was carefully prepared with the help of patient groups and fully checked by our lawyers so I reject the claim that the BMA material is either misleading or mendacious.'

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley said: 'The time has come for Gordon Brown to stop dithering, listen to the concerns of local communities and ditch his plans to impose polyclinics in areas where they are not wanted or needed.'

LibDem health spokesman Norman Lamb said: 'The Government is making a grave mistake taking doctors on in this aggressive way.'