Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the number and proportion of people who were unable to secure within a week an appointment with a GP since January 2017; and what assessment he has made of the effect of the level of access to GPs on attendance at accident and emergency departments since January 2017.

The latest GP Patient Survey which surveyed patients over January - March 2017 found that 20% of respondents waited a week or more to see or speak to someone.

Of these, 36% wanted to be seen sooner, 32% wanted to wait a week or more before seeing a general practitioner (GP) or nurse and 31% said they did not have a specific day in mind for their appointment.

In relation to impact on accident and emergency, 19% of respondents to the GP survey said that they either were not able to get an appointment or were not offered an appointment at a convenient time. Of these, 4.7% went to an accident and emergency department instead. This amounts to 0.8% of all respondents to the survey.