MINISTERS should quit vacuous grandstanding and face up to the dangers of private profit in the NHS, doctors said yesterday.

Leader Dr Mark Porter said the government’s mooted plans for NHS expansion had “barely the detail to fill a post-it note,” and accused ministers of fluffing their sums.

The BMA also resolved to oppose the inclusion of the NHS in hated EU-US trade deal, which will allow US corporations to sue the government in a secretive court if they fail to get their hands on public contracts.

Attacking the government’s plans for seven-day GP services, Mr Porter said: “They talk about GPs doing even more, when thousands already work in out-of-hours services, propping up the NHS.

“When will they provide substance over rhetoric and recycled ideas, to focus on the detail of how they will support GPs already burnt-out from overwork, in a service where more than 10,000 GPs are predicted to leave in the next five years?”

A Department of Health spokeswoman accused the doctors of being “out of touch with what patients want” and called on Mr Porter to “tone down this rhetoric.”

The conference heard that TTIP would “make privatisation of the NHS not only possible but probable.”

Belfast GP Henry McKee called for the BMA to go further and oppose the deal outright.

“If there is anything resembling an NHS by the time this treaty is negotiated it won’t survive this treaty,” he said.

“The correct motion is to kill this treaty dead, not to tolerate it sneaking in and mugging us.”