Gareth Oelmann, chairman of the British Medical Association Cymru’s GP committee, criticised a decline of funding for general practice as a whole over many years. Dr Oelmann, a GP partner in Cwmbran, Gwent, said the proportion of NHS Wales spending dedicated to general practice has fallen from 8.7 per cent to 6.01 per cent since 2005/06. Ian Harris, a GP partner in Bridgend who is deputy chair of the BMA committee, said GPs can be part of the solution to pressures on hospital services. Rowena Christmas, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners Cymru, warned GPs are firefighting all the time due to reducing budgets. She said: “We’ve only got one pot of money and we need to be courageous with it and take it away from the bottomless pit of the hospital and put a little bit more towards primary care.”