Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Lord Astor of Hever on 23 June (HL Deb, col 1059), how many general practitioners they plan to train to respond to the physical and mental health needs of veterans in (1) England, (2) Wales, (3) Scotland, and (4) Northern Ireland.

The NHS Mandate from the Government to Health Education England includes an objective to raise awareness of psychological and physical issues which are commonly faced by veterans and their families and the resources which are available to help them.

Health Education England are working to ensure that there is training available so that there can be a specialist general practitioners in all 211 clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) trained in the physical and mental health needs of armed forces veterans by summer 2015. Health Education England are working with the Royal College of General Practitioners to ensure that the learning is taken up and used to support the development of care and services to veterans.

NHS England is exploring how CCGs and other local networks can best support general practitioners in using the available learning and developing the knowledge and skills needed to support this important group of patients who may have particular mental and physical health needs.

Health and social care is a devolved matter and the responsibility of individual devolved administrations and therefore we cannot respond to this question in relation to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.