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 timely access to general practice appointments.

We are committed to improving timely access to general practice appointments. Last year, we delivered 6.8 million more appointments in general practices. Since October 2024, we have invested £160 million into the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) to support the recruitment of over 2,000 general practitioners (GPs), exceeding our initial target of 1,000. For the 2026/27 GP Contract, we’re investing an additional £485 million into GPs, removing restrictions to allow primary care networks to hire more GPs via ARRS, and introducing a practice-level reimbursement scheme which will be available to practices to hire additional GPs, or fund additional sessions with existing GPs to improve access in GPs which aims to strengthen capacity, access, and improve patient satisfaction.

NHS England published the Medium‑Term Planning Framework in October, setting a new requirement for all urgent appointments to be delivered on the same day, ensuring that patients needing urgent care are prioritised. Building on this, the 2026/27 GP Contract makes it explicit that any requests identified as clinically urgent, as determined by the GPs, must be dealt with on the same day

Patient satisfaction is already rising after a decade of decline. Office for National Statistics data from January 2026 shows that 76.8% of patients reported it was “easy” to contact their GP, up from 60.9% in July 2024.