Doctors accused of surgeries windfall

DOCTORS are using a taxpayer-funded programme to pocket “millions of pounds” in windfalls from their surgeries, an investigation has claimed.

The “notional rent” scheme allows GPs to buy buildings for their surgeries which they then “rent” back to the Department of Health for more than the mortgage repayments, according to the report.

Surgeries are then sold when the GP retires and they are allowed to keep the profits from the sale of the building under an arrangement dating back to the foundation of the NHS in 1948.

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James Wharton, a Conservative member of the Commons Public Accounts committee, accused GPs of “fiddling the system” and said he would ask the National Audit Office to open a “full and comprehensive investigation” into surgery funding.

He said: “For too long these people have profited too easily at the expense of the taxpayer and the Government should look at this system and see whether it can be changed to ensure better value for money.”

The investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism claimed GPs have boasted that they have made six or even seven- figure windfalls from the system.

It also said that 86 per cent of GP premises are either owned by doctors or by private companies and are paid for through the scheme, costing the Department of Health £2.5bn in the past five years.

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The Department of Health said the cost of premises was currently more than £630m, up by 70 per cent since 2004.

A spokesman said: “This system incentivises GPs to expand and improve services so that people have proper access to modern facilities.

“It represents the cost to GPs of renting or owning the premises, and is a cost that would met by Government direct if GPs did not.”

The Department of Health also argued that the current arrangements covered costs which GPs incurred while making the premises available to their patients.