Most patients will never read a regulatory consultation document. But a fight currently playing out between the British Medical Association and the government over the General Medical Council’s governance touches, directly, on the question this site was built around: who gets to be called a doctor, and who decides.
What the BMA is asking for
The BMA’s ongoing campaign for GMC reform sets out four areas where it wants change:
Governance. The BMA argues doctors should hold a majority of seats on the GMC’s governing bodies, and that those seats should be directly elected by the medical profession rather than appointed.
Education and training. Only registered medical practitioners should be able to receive a Certificate of Completion of Training, and the GMC should maintain equivalence with recognised international qualification standards.
Registration and titles. This is the part most relevant here: the BMA wants “registered medical practitioner” to become a protected title reserved for doctors alone, with physician associates and anaesthesia associates regulated under a separate framework — potentially renamed “assistants” to remove ambiguity altogether.
Fitness to practise. The BMA has called for fitness-to-practise investigations to apply a criminal standard of proof, and for the GMC’s ability to appeal tribunal decisions to be removed — a power the BMA says has undermined doctors’ trust in the process and discouraged openness.
Why this has escalated
The fitness-to-practise point above isn’t theoretical — it’s currently the subject of a live dispute. In June 2026, the government ran a consultation, closing on 23 June, on whether to retain and even expand the GMC’s right to appeal tribunal decisions. The BMA argued the consultation had misrepresented the findings of the independent review it was supposedly based on, and on 16 June sent the Secretary of State a formal letter before legal action.
The pressure worked, at least partially: on 15 July 2026, the government announced it would reconsult, with the BMA’s deputy chair noting the government had “recognised its approach to this important consultation… was fundamentally flawed.” As it stands, the GMC still retains its existing right of appeal while the new consultation runs — the BMA says it will keep opposing that, and specifically opposes extending it to interim tribunal decisions too. The point at issue is unresolved, but it shows the reform campaign is not just a position paper — it’s an active fight with real, moving deadlines.
The bigger picture
Strip away the procedural detail and the BMA’s core argument is the same one at the heart of the Leng Review, and the same one behind the confusion over “Doctor” as a title: the words used to describe clinical roles in the NHS have multiplied faster than the public’s ability to keep track of what each one means. “Registered medical practitioner” sounds, to most people, exactly like “doctor” — and currently, it doesn’t reliably mean the same thing on paper.
Whether or not this particular reform succeeds, the direction of travel is clear: professional bodies on both sides of this debate now agree that title clarity is a patient safety issue, not a semantic one. That’s the case this site was built to make, and it’s reassuring to see it being made, independently, by the BMA as well.
We’ll follow how the reconsultation and the wider reform campaign develop.
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