Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of (a) the funding provided through and (b) other aspects of general practitioner core contracts.

We have announced a proposed £889 million uplift for general practices (GPs) in 2025/26, and set out the proposed areas of contract reform which will help us to deliver on our commitments. This is the largest uplift to GP funding in years, reversing the recent trend, with a rising share of total National Health Service resources going to GPs.

GPs receive funding through a range of income streams in return for providing services specified in the GP Contract. Global sum, which is the funding allocated for providing core services, makes up 50 to 60% of practice income. The global sum allocation formula, also known as the Carr-Hill formula, is designed to ensure that resources are directed to practices based on an estimate of their patient workload and unavoidable practice costs.  The rest of the income is made of the Quality and Outcomes Framework, premises payments, directed enhanced services, and additional services, for instance vaccine and immunisation services.

Practices are able to provide additional services by opting in, and will receive payment for these services separately to global sum payments. As commissioners of primary care, integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning additional services locally, which are not agreed nationally and can vary in scope and funding to fit local needs.