Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the health risks of health declaration forms being completed in physical form during the covid-19 outbreak.

Much of the work undertaken by general practitioners (GPs) in completing health declaration forms for patients is private (e.g. non-contractual). In recognition of the health risks of continuing to fill these in in physical form, as well as to free up GPs’ time to respond to the pandemic, in March 2020 NHS England and NHS Improvement wrote to the primary care sector, requesting that all practices consider stopping any private work they were doing to help free up capacity.