Birmingham doctors have condemned the Government's NHS reforms, claiming they offer patients worse health-care at a higher cost.

Ministers will experience the wrath of GPs at a British Medical Association conference in London, starting tomorrow.

Motions submitted for debate include one from Birmingham GPs claiming Government plans to "privatise" the health service will damage the relationship between doctors and patients.

Doctors from Staffordshire accuse Ministers of making medical staff scapegoats for the funding crisis facing the NHS.

And Worcestershire GPs claim they are being forced to treat infectious flu patients without sufficient protection.

More than 400 GPs will attend the annual conference of Local Medical Committees, the statutory bodies which represent Britain's 43,000 GPs.

It follows the announcement last week that the NHS deficit has more than doubled to #512 million. In the West Midlands, health trusts overspent by more than #80 million last year. Health Minister Lord Warner addresses the conference tomorrow but could receive a hostile reception.

A motion from the Birmingham committee attacks plans to employ more private clinics to treat NHS patients.

The Government says this will offer patients greater choice, and may encourage greater efficiency within NHS hospitals.

But Birmingham GPs have presented a motion for the conference to debate attacking "large scale for-profit privatisation".

They claim it will lead to "higher costs, reduced accountability, more fragmentation".

Patients will lose the "long term, trusting and personal relationships with their healthcare" they need, the GPs said.

Some critics of the Government have accused it of causing the cash crisis by signing new contracts in 2004, which pay family doctors according to the results they achieve.

This increased average salaries from #65,000 to almost #100,000, and there have been reports of GPs earning up to #250,000.

The Government's NHS annual report, released last week, said health services were improving.

It showed waiting times for operations and accident and emergency services were shorter than ever, with 98 per cent of A&E patients now seen within four hours.

The NHS deficit represents less than one per cent of the annual NHS budget, Ministers point out.

Sir Ian Carruthers, acting chief executive of the NHS, said: "We are not only delivering more and improved health services, but also a much better quality of care for patients.

"By next year, spending on the NHS will have trebled in a decade. The extra resources are already making big differences everywhere."