Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is doing to tackle shortages of GPs.

We remain committed to growing the general practitioner (GP) workforce and number of doctors in general practice, and the Government is determined to deliver this as soon as possible. There were over 2,000 more full time equivalent doctors working in general practice in June 2023 compared to June 2019.

We are working with NHS England to increase the GP workforce in England. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why doctors leave the profession, and encourage them to return to practice.

NHS England has made retention schemes available to boost the GP workforce. To boost recruitment, we have increased the number of GP training places. Last year, we saw the highest ever number of doctors accepting a place on GP training - 4,032 trainees in 2022, compared to 2,671 in 2014.