Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve GP to patient ratios.

We are starting to see consistent growth in the general practice (GP) workforce. We have funded primary care networks with an additional £160 million to recruit recently qualified GPs through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme. Over 2,500 individual GPs have now been recruited, preventing them graduating into unemployment. We are committed to expanding the GP workforce further, by training thousands more GPs over the course of this Parliament. We have taken the first steps towards this, with an additional 250 training places available this year, taking the total to 4,250 places with plans to expand this further.

Each GP is required to provide services to meet the reasonable needs of their patients. There is no NHS England recommendation for how many patients a GP should have assigned, or the ratio of GPs or other practice staff to patients. The demands each patient places on their GP are different and can be affected by many different factors, including rurality and patient demographics. It is necessary to consider the workforce for each practice as a whole, not only GPs but also the range of health professionals available who are able to respond to the needs of their patients.