Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to improve access to and standards of primary care.

The Government recently outlined its ambitions in ‘Transforming Primary Care'. We have invested £50 million to improve access and made changes to the general practitioner (GP) contract to help ensure that patients aged over 75 and those with the most complex needs receive more personalised and proactive care.

We have also appointed a new Chief Inspector of General Practice, and the Care Quality Commission is inspecting standards in GP practices and taking strong action wherever they find poor care.