Oral Answers to Questions

Douglas Carswell Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Poulter]

Our NHS has always benefited from overseas staff bringing their skills and coming to work here, and we can all welcome that as long as they have a good standard of spoken English, which is something that we are putting right through the legislation that we are introducing. As I outlined earlier, there are now around 7,500 more nurses, midwives and health visitors working in the NHS than there were under the previous Government.

[Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

2. What contingency plans his Department has formulated to cope with the expected increase in the number of GPs retiring before 2020.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

In addition to the extra 1,000 GPs working in our NHS since 2010, our mandate to Health Education England will ensure that 50% of trainee doctors enter GP training programmes by 2016. This will enable the delivery of 5,000 additional newly qualified GPs by 2020.

[Douglas Carswell]

I am told that many young doctors are choosing not to go into general practice. That, coupled with the number of retiring GPs, is leading to real shortages in places such as Clacton. What more can be done to make general practice more attractive to young doctors, in order to offset the number of GPs who are retiring?