Doctors urged to scrap fee for domestic abuse victim letters
A TOWN hall is calling on GPs to ‘scrap the fee’ for doctors’ notes for victims of domestic violence.
Some doctors in Rochdale are charging up to £75 for the letters, which allow abuse victims to get legal aid.
But now the town’s councillors are calling on GPs to drop the ‘unfair charge.’
A motion to launch a ‘Rochdale GPs’ Pledge’ was passed by the council on Wednesday night.
It states: “Due to government changes to the legal aid system, women must now provide an approved piece of evidence to prove they have been subject to abuse. A key, recognised form of evidence is a letter from a GP, but many GPs in Rochdale charge a fee (in some cases as much as £75) to produce that letter.
“This council believes that no GP should charge domestic abuse victims for a letter needed to access legal aid and resolves to support the Scrap the Fee campaign, demand that the government scrap this unfair charge by bringing the service back under the NHS contract and use its relationship with GPs to bring about a ‘Rochdale GPs’ Pledge’ not to charge for legal aid evidence letters in cases of domestic abuse.”
Coun Janet Emsley, the councillor behind the motion, said: “We want to take away as many of the barriers as possible that prevent domestic abuse victims from coming forward - and this is one way we can do that.
“We don’t want victims to suffer financial stress on top of everything else they are facing.”
A spokesperson for Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Clinical Commissioning Group, which oversees doctors’ surgeries in the borough, said it encouraged GPs to abolish the charge.
They added: “Provision of these and similar letters is not an NHS service and as such charges for GP letters are made at the discretion of individual GPs. The CCG has no formal influence over these decisions however we would completely support any measures aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence and their children and as such we fully encourage GPs to consider this provision free of charge.”