ABSTRACT

In the middle of the Nineteenth Century the British Medical Association (BMA) played the leading role in getting parliamentary approval for a system of regulating the medical profession, so that the public could choose between properly qualified practitioners and quacks. The Medical Act of 1969 implementing those changes and the Council of the BMA agreed to a retention fee of two pounds per year, without consulting the profession. The Prime Minister, on behalf of the Government, accepted the Report as far as junior doctors were concerned, but referred the rest of it to its own National Board for Prices and Incomes. A large number of Divisions of the BMA sent in resolutions opposing the charges and also demanding changes in the Constitution of the General Medical Council so that a majority of its members would be doctors who had been directly elected by their colleagues. The Brynmor Jones Working Party on the Constitution of the GMC reported in March 1971.