Jeremy Hunt responds to 'spouting rubbish'

A family doctors' leader says GPs are not prepared to shore up an emergency healthcare system which he claims has been left unsafe by "political meddling".

The chairman of the British Medical Association's GP committee Dr Laurence Buckman is accusing Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt of being more interested in bashing doctors and spouting "rubbish".

Speaking to the Today programme Mr Hunt said: "It's a complex problem and the main issue we are dealing with is a big growth in the number of older people... in the next few years we will have several million older people who have not one, not two but three or more complex conditions."

"We need to have a clinician accountable for those people when they are outside hospital just in the same way a consultant is responsible for them when they are inside hospital if we are going to give them the kind of care we all want the NHS to do."

"It's a big change and I think the GP contract is part of the problem," he added.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Thursday 23 May 2013.