Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of GP funding relative to the proportion of NHS patient contact delivered in primary care.

The Carr-Hill formula, which underpins capitation payments to general practices (GPs), is designed to ensure that resources are directed to practices based on an estimate of their patient workload and unavoidable practice costs.

It is a workload-based formula, introduced in 2004, that is designed to ensure that practices are reimbursed for their expected workload. Practices are paid more if their registered patients are expected to use services more based on past usage patterns of patients with similar characteristics. It takes into account factors, such as the sex and age of patients, morbidity and mortality, patient list turnover, and unavoidable costs based on geographical area.

We recognise the importance of ensuring that funding for core services is distributed equitably between practices across the country, and will therefore review the Carr-Hill formula. Details of the review, including timeframes, will be confirmed in due course.

We are investing an additional £889 million in GPs to reinforce the front door of the National Health Service, bringing total spend on the GP Contract to £13.2 billion in 2025/26. This is the biggest increase in over a decade, and we are pleased that the General Practitioners Committee England is supportive of the contract changes.