Health chiefs rigged the rules so that government targets for patients to see their GP in less than 48 hours could be met, according to a leaked memo passed to The Observer.
Ministers have trumpeted their success in slashing waiting times for a GP appointment, with official figures now showing that 98 per cent of patients can see their family doctor within two working days of telephoning.
But serious questions emerge today with revelations that at least one local health trust not only tipped off its doctors as to the exact timing of the monthly survey of appointment availability, but also offered to draft in extra temporary doctors for those likely to miss it.
Southampton City Primary Care Trust emailed surgeries on 5 July, only two days before the survey was to be conducted, reminding them of the precise date and two-hour time slot when the call would come - and asking practices to contact them 'if you think you will have any problems hitting the GP 48-hours access target'. Doctors who did so were reportedly offered locums.
As local Lib Dem MP Sandra Gidley accusing the health trust of 'fiddling' the figures, the British Medical Association denounced the tactics, arguing the survey should be 'reasonably random'.
'I am pretty sure I know why the trust has chosen to do it, because access targets are one of the things that go towards their star rating,' said Dr Hamish Meldrum, deputy chairman of the BMA's GP committee.
'But this is not something we would support. It just shows what happens when there are rather silly targets and a lot of importance is placed on them.'
The Department of Health yesterday insisted that using locums was 'consistent with our aim of ensuring that patients can see a GP or nurse at a time convenient to them' and that it was routine for surgeries to know when the survey would happen.
However Meldrum said his own practice was not forewarned of its survey. He had, however, heard 'tales of it being virtually as blatant as you are describing' in other areas.
Gidley, a former pharmacist whose Romsey constituency is covered by the trust, said such practices devalued the figures.
'If I were an NHS bureaucrat and wanted my pay rise, I would do everything I could think of to make sure that I hit my targets, so I can understand the pressures on them,' she said.
The row follows similar controversy over the government target that no patient should wait longer than four hours in A&E. The Observer revealed in May that hospitals were warned that waits would be measured during one critical week of the year: some spent hundreds of thousands of pounds drafting in extra medical staff for that week, or cancelled operations to free beds for casualty patients.
