Warning over 'polyclinics' proposal

The large health centres bringing together several GPs and specialists and opening for extended hours were a high-profile feature of Lord Darzi's interim report on the NHS last year and it is thought his final report in June could propose rolling them out across England.

But they have met opposition from GPs who fear they will damage the relationship between individual patients and their family doctor and bring in competition for NHS work from multinational private medicine companies.

Health minister Lord Darzi, commissioned by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to carry out a wholesale review of the NHS, told BBC1 Breakfast: "Most patients love their GP, but I think we need to support that fantastic relationship between a patient and a doctor.

"Most practices now are on average four, five or six GPs practising together under a single roof.

"I have no doubt in the future we are going to see a critical mass of general practitioners working together rather than what we used to see in the past, which were practices with a single-handed clinician."

But the deputy chairman of the British Medical Association's GPs' committee, Dr Richard Vautrey, said the Government was trying to force a "London-centric" model onto the whole country, when it was not appropriate to less densely populated areas.

GPs were already moving gradually towards larger practices and longer opening hours in areas where they found it was needed, he said.

Dr Vautrey told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "This is a Government plan that is potentially going to waste hundreds of millions of pounds of scarce NHS resources, creating very large health centres that many areas of the country simply don't need or want.

"The Government are imposing this centralised plan on to everyone whether they need it or not."