FAMILY doctors across the region are facing significant funding cuts despite being asked to increase their opening hours, angry GPs claimed last night.

Extending GP opening hours has become a major political hot potato with the main political parties clashing over greater patient access to doctors.

The Conservatives have made extended opening hours a major plank of their plans to modernise the NHS - but Labour says fewer GP surgeries are now open on weekends and out-of-hours than five years ago.

Now GPs have entered the debate - warning that funding cuts could have a major impact on plans to extend medical services.

Dr Bill Beeby, a Middlesbrough GP who represents family doctors from County Durham and Cleveland on the British Medical Association’s national GP Committee, said the latest round of funding negotiations with NHS England - which have just finished - would mean major financial cuts for many GP surgeries.

“The deals have only just been finalised and for my practice the amount of money being withdrawn represents three-quarters of a GP’s pay,” said Dr Beeby, who works at the Parkway Medical Centre in Middlesbrough.

“In a lot of practices there will be pressure on the ability to fund their existing staffing levels because funding is being withdrawn,” he added.

Dr Beeby’s revelations about new funding cuts were made against the backdrop of a new survey of more than 15,500 GPs carried out by the BMA.

The survey found that nine out of ten GPs questioned believed their heavy workload had a negative impact on the quality of care.

While half of GPs agreed that practices should offer extended opening only one in five thought seven-day services, proposed by the last Government, should go ahead. Three-quarters thought that funding for general practice should be increased.

“At a time when people are talking about increasing access to GPs we not only have a shortage of GPs but most practices in the North-East are having funding withdrawn from them,” he added.

Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the BMA’s national GP Committee, said: “ Local negotiations between practices, local medical committees and local area teams of NHS England have only just concluded.”

Many practices in the North of England will start losing money in October and this process will continue for the next five to seven years, he added.

Commenting on seven day opening in the light of funding cuts Dr Vautrey said: “It is nonsense. This is why GPs are so angry about politicians talking about extending service when they can’t see the cracks in the foundations.”

But a Conservative spokeswoman insisted that general practice had received additional funding.

She said: “The latest national GP contract was agreed by NHS England and the BMA in September and sees an increase in the amount of money going into general practice.

“The Conservative party believes general practice is the bedrock of our NHS which is why we have invested an additional £150m to make it easier for people to see a GP at the evening or at the weekend, brought back named GPs to restore the link between doctors and their patients and invested £1 billion over four years to improve GPs surgeries.”

Jamie Reed, Labour’s Shadow Health Minister, said: "The Tories' plans for extreme spending cuts mean these figures will get even worse - they won't be able to protect the NHS.

“People across the North-East are fed up with five years of broken promises from David Cameron on the NHS. He promised to open GP surgeries seven days a week but he made it harder for people to get an appointment from Monday to Friday instead.

"The NHS as we know it can’t survive five more years of the Tories. Only Labour has a fully-funded plan to restore the NHS with a £2.5 billion a year Time to Care Fund to recruit 500 more GPs in the North-East and guarantee appointments within 48 hours.”