Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure an equitable distribution of general medical practitioners in England between regions.

Following actions taken by this government, England currently has the highest number of fully qualified general practitioners (GPs) since 2015.

We want to go further than this, and that’s why thousands more GPs are being trained to expand capacity further. The number of GP training places has been expanded by 250, taking the total number of available places to 4250 for 2025/26, and we plan to expand this again for 2026/27. Current and future expansions to post-graduate training, including foundation training and GP specialty training, have been planned on the basis of relative need, balanced with ability of locations to support trainees.

There has long been criticism that the way GP funding is allocated across England (the Carr-Hill formula), is considered outdated. This is why we are reviewing the Carr-Hill formula, to ensure funding for core services is distributed equitably between practices across the country. The first phase of the review is expected to conclude in March 2026.

Following feedback from the 2026/27 GP contract consultation, this Government is introducing a practice-level GP reimbursement scheme using £292 million of repurposed funding from the current Capacity and Access Payment. This funding will be available to practices to hire additional GPs or fund additional sessions with existing GPs to improve access to general practice. The funding is equivalent to 1600 FTE GPs nationally and aims to strengthen capacity, access, and improve patient satisfaction, whilst also addressing GP unemployment and underemployment.

We are also increasing the flexibility of the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) by removing the restriction that ARRS funding can only be used for recently qualified GPs, increasing the maximum reimbursement amount for GP roles to reflect experience, and enabling primary care networks to recruit a broader range of ARRS roles, where agreed with the commissioner.