![\"Health](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/skynews-wes-streeting-nhs-national-operations_6973255.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAll GP surgeries in England are required to offer online appointment bookings from today.<\/p>\n
Practices must keep their websites and app services available from at least 8am to 6.30pm, Monday through Friday, for non-urgent appointments, medication queries and admin requests.<\/p>\n
Many surgeries are already offering online bookings and consultations, but services are typically less effective in working-class areas.<\/p>\n
The Department of Health and Social Care says there is a lack of consistency, as some surgeries that offer online services are choosing to switch the function off during busier periods.<\/p>\n
The British Medical Association (BMA) has argued safeguards have not been put in place, nor have extra staff been brought in to manage what it anticipates will be a “barrage of online requests.”<\/p>\n
The BMA has said GPs are considering a range of actions after voting to enter a dispute with the government over the plan.<\/p>\n
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has urged the BMA to embrace the plan, saying the union’s resistance is “a real disservice to so many GPs” who have already introduced the service.<\/p>\n
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Image:
\n Health Secretary Wes Streeting says booking a GP appointment should be as easy as booking a takeaway. Pic: PA<\/p>\n
‘As easy as booking a takeaway’<\/p>\n
The minister said the government will help practices that need assistance to implement the plan, “but we’ve got to modernise”.<\/p>\n
Mr Streeting told the Labour Party conference: “Many GPs already offer this service because they’ve changed with the times.<\/p>\n
“Why shouldn’t be booking a GP appointment be as easy as booking a delivery, a taxi, or a takeaway? And our policy comes alongside a billion pounds of extra funding for general practice and 2,000 extra GPs.<\/p>\n
“Yet the BMA threatens to oppose it in 2025. Well, I’ll give you this warning; if we give in to the forces of conservatism, they will turn the NHS into a museum of 20th century healthcare.”<\/p>\n
Read more from Sky News: <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n
Starmer will take ‘no more lectures’ from Farage<\/a>
Streeting says Labour ‘need Angela Rayner back’<\/a><\/p>\n