Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to tackle falling numbers of GPs in England.

The NHS Long Term Plan made a clear commitment to the future of general practice, with primary and community care set to receive at least £4.5 billion more in real terms a year by 2023/24. Spend on these services will grow faster than the rising National Health Service budget. Since the launch of the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS England and the British Medical Association’s General Practitioners (GP) Committee have agreed a five-year GP (General Medical Services) contract framework from 2019/20. The new contract framework will be essential to deliver the ambitions set out in the NHS Long Term Plan through strong general practice services. The contract confirmed that NHS England will now extend a number of general practice programmes until 2023/24 to help deliver against the commitment to 5,000 additional doctors in general practice.

NHS England and Health Education England (HEE) are working together with the profession to increase the GP workforce. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why GPs are leaving the profession, and encourage GPs to return to practice.

Further plans to support delivery will be set out in the final NHS workforce implementation plan due to be published later this year.