Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has been made of the potential impact of (a) the new online consultation system for GP surgeries and (b) as part of that, urgent clinical queries being included on forms meant for non-urgent business on levels of patient safety.

General practices (GPs) are independent businesses contracted by the National Health Service to deliver essential services, and as part of these contracts they are required to provide modern telephony systems and online consultation tools. In the 2025 contract negotiations with the General Practitioners Committee England, agreement was reached to ensure online, telephone, and reception access is available throughout core hours. To support safe implementation, this was deferred to 1 October 2025, with support available from NHS England and the integrated care boards for practices that need help meeting the requirement. These changes build on several years of work to modernise GPs and improve access.

Online consultation systems already require practices to triage clinical need, so extending access to core hours does not change how urgent and non‑urgent queries are managed, it simply gives patients more choice in how they contact their practice and helps ensure urgent issues are identified quickly while non‑urgent requests are handled appropriately.

Practices already using online systems have seen significant improvements. One London GP surgery reduced waits from 14 days to just three, with 95% of patients seen within a week.