BMA / GPC 

 

LMCs are the local representative committees of NHS General Practitioners and represent their interests. LMCs interact and work with the GPC as well as other branch committees and local specialist medical committees in various ways, including the annual conference.

 

Cheshire LMC send representatives to the annual conference who will speak to motions that have been put forward. This can influence policy!

 

The BMA as a trade union and professional association

 

The BMA stands up for doctors both individually and collectively on a wide variety of employment issues and, since the inception of the NHS, they have been formally recognised for collective bargaining purposes within national negotiating machinery and by individual employers at local level.

 

BMA as a professional body

 

Through research and publishing they lead debate on key ethical, scientific and public health matters and award grants to encourage individual research in medicine.

The General Practitioners Committee

 

The General Practitioners Committee (GPC) remains the only body which represents all GPs in Britain and deals with all matters affecting NHS general practitioners whether or not they are BMA members. (The Committee also has responsibility within the BMA for all matters affecting prison doctors as they are doctors performing primary medical services.)

 

It has 86 members, 43 of whom are directly elected representatives of local medical committees (LMCs). It meets monthly and much of its work is done by subcommittees and task groups.

 

The Committee is represented on a wide range of national bodies concerned with health. In addition, other organisations are represented on the GPC itself. These include voting nominees of the Medical Women’s Federation, the Medical Practitioners Union, the British International Doctors Association, and non-voting nominees of other BMA branch of practice committees, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Dental Association.