Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to increase recruitment of GPs.

The Government is committed to having an extra 5,000 doctors working in general practice by 2020/21. The Department is working with NHS England and Health Education England (HEE) to increase the number of general practitioner (GP) training places. In 2016, HEE recruited the highest ever number of GP trainees (3,019 out of 3,250) – 93% fill rate. In addition to increasing the number of trainees, we are taking forward a range of other measures to increase both recruitment and retention such as encouraging return to general practice, attracting medical students to become GP trainees, as well as a strengthened package of support to help GPs remain in clinical general practice.