Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate her Department has made of the length of waiting times for GP appointments by region in the latest period for which data is available.

Data showing the proportion of time between booking an appointment with a general practice and the appointment taking place by National Health Service regions in England in the 12 months up to December 2019 are presented in the attached table.

NHS Digital publishes ‘Appointments in General Practice’. This is an experimental data collection which is still being refined and improved.

It should be noted that the ‘time from booking to appointment’ refers only to the time elapsed between the successful booking of an appointment and the appointment taking place. The data does not take into consideration that many patients will be appropriately booking ahead as part of the continuity of care they receive for long-term conditions.