Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress has been made on the pledge by NHS England in July 2017 to hire 2000 extra GPs from abroad.

A small number of pilot areas started recruitment in 2017. The next stage of the recruitment programme is on track to start at the end of 2017/18 as planned, with the aim of recruiting 600 doctors by the end of March 2019 and the remainder of the 2,000 by the end of March 2020. The plan is to recruit suitably qualified overseas doctors into English general practice. This will be carried out in a phased approach with recruitment initially focussing on the European Economic Area where doctors’ qualifications are automatically recognised by the General Medical Council.