Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he had made of the number of GP appointments performed by each of the Spine Directory Service roles in 2024.

In 2024, across the general practices (GPs) and primary care networks in England, over 165.8 million appointments were delivered by GPs, 77.3 million were delivered by nurses, 95 million were delivered by other direct patient care staff, and 40.1 million were delivered by professionals of an unknown spine directory service role. There has been a 9.6% increase in appointments delivered in GPs within the last year. In December 2024, 29.2 million appointments were delivered, an increase of 2.5 million appointments compared to December 2023, when 26.7 million were delivered.