Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to improve the provision of out-of-hours GP services.

In October 2015, NHS England published new Integrated Urgent Care Commissioning Standards, which set out how the public will benefit from a 24/7 integrated urgent care service through a single point of entry, including out-of-hours general practice services.

The integrated services will be introduced in phases, to be fully in place across the whole country by 2020. Local clinical commissioning groups will be responsible for commissioning these services. The new Integrated Urgent Care Commissioning Standards will form the basis of new service specifications. NHS England is developing key performance indicators to support providers in delivering these services. The indicators will help to ensure that all patients receive the same standard of high quality urgent care services wherever they live in England.