Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of NHS England's General Practice Resilience Programme.

NHS England launched the General Practice Resilience Programme 28 July 2016 following publication of the General Practice Forward View in April 2016 which committed to invest £40 million in supporting practices to become more sustainable and resilient, including £16 million this year.

The programme devolves funding to NHS England’s 13 local teams to secure and deliver a wide menu of support to practices prioritised locally against nationally set criteria. As the first milestones in delivering this four-year programme locally have been focused on developing a local support approach and identifying which practices to support, it is too early to assess its effectiveness.

NHS England is, however, committed to ensuring that the £16 million is invested in support for practices this financial year and to evaluating the effectiveness of to ensure best value from support to practices.