Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average GP list size was in (a) England, (b) Greater London and (c) Enfield in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement.

The requested information is contained in the following table:

Average GP practice list size by selected areas in England, 2009-2013

Notes: ¹ Workforce data is available by National Health Service organisation only, not geographical regions such as Greater London. Greater London is captured by London Area Team and Enfield by Enfield Clinical Commissioning Group. Prior to 2013, the area of London was serviced by London Strategic Health Authority and Enfield was serviced by Enfield Primary Care Trust. There is no break in the data as the old and new London organisations are coterminous and therefore the data is still comparable over the years provided.

As per the latest GP contract, patients register with a GP practice and are attributed to the practice, not a specific GP.

Data quality: The Health and Social Care Information Centre seeks to minimise inaccuracies and the effect of missing and invalid data, but responsibility for data accuracy resides with the organisations providing the data. Methods are continually being updated to improve data quality where changes impact on figures already published. This is assessed, but unless it is significant at national level, figures are not updated. Impact at detailed or local level is footnoted in relevant analyses.

Source: The Health and Social Care Information Centre General and Personal Medical Statistics. Patient registration information taken from National Health Application and Infrastructure Services Exeter GP payments system.