Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to increase GP recruitment in South Bristol.

The Government has committed to increasing the primary and community care workforce by 10,000 by 2020, including an additional 5,000 doctors in general practice.

NHS England advises it has invested £10million to kick start a range of initiatives to expand the general practitioner (GP) workforce, set out in a joint action plan developed with Health Education England (HEE), Royal College of General Practiioners and British Medical Association. Achievements to date include , a new national induction and refreshers scheme was launched in 2015.

Further measures to boost the general practice workforce are set out in the General Practice Forward View, published by NHS England on 21 April 2016.

HEE’s confirms it is working to maintain a high fill rate of Bristol’s programme for Postgraduate Training pre Certificate of Completion of Training and to continue to produce high calibre GPs leaving the Bristol Programme upon completion of their training. HEE advises it is doing this by:-

― Continuing to offer high quality training placements throughout the Bristol region;

― Promoting new initiatives such as the Global Health Programme and Leadership and Excellence Extensions of Training opportunities; and,

― Maintaining existing Scholarship programme for trainees in their final year to gain extended skills in primary care.