Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many GP practices there were in (a) July 2009, (b) May 2010 and (c) the latest month for which figures are available.

We are giving the National Health Service a total of £150 million to pilot new ideas on extending general practitioner (GP) access for millions more people, including offering more appointments from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week, as well as more email and Skype consultations. We invested £50 million in wave one in 2014/15 and will invest a further £100 million for a second wave for 2015/16.

The most recent GP patient survey found that 85.2% of patients rate their overall experience of their GP practice as good and 73.8% of patients rated their overall experience of making an appointment as good.

The requested information is contained in the following table and it is important to note that these figures also include practice mergers and takeovers and do not provide an accurate representation of activity or service provision.

Number of active GP practices (England)

Source: Information Centre for Health and Social Care