Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, in the light of reports that the provision of weight management support in the NHS is limited, (1) what assessment they have made of the adequacy of existing GP training in obesity management, and (2) what steps they are taking to embed evidence-based obesity education, including behavioural and psychological approaches, into GP specialty training curricula.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises the importance of ensuring that the National Health Service workforce is provided with high-quality training to support them to deliver quality care to patients living with obesity.
The curricula for postgraduate specialty training are developed by royal colleges and faculties and approved by the General Medical Council. Standards of education and proficiency are the responsibility of the statutorily independent professional regulators.
Individual employers are responsible for appropriate ongoing training and continuing professional development to ensure they continue to provide safe and effective care. NHS England and other organisations support employers and the NHS workforce by providing and signposting to evidence‑based training resources on weight management. These include programmes that incorporate behavioural approaches, and in some cases psychological elements, available through platforms such as e‑Learning for Healthcare, the Royal College of General Practitioners Obesity Hub, and the Strategic Centre for Obesity Professional Education programme.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that all members of the NHS workforce, including psychologists, dietitians, nurses, and pharmacists, receive mandatory training on weight management support, recognising obesity as a life-long relapsing condition.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises the importance of ensuring that the National Health Service workforce is provided with high-quality training to support them to deliver quality care to patients living with obesity.
The curricula for postgraduate specialty training are developed by royal colleges and faculties and approved by the General Medical Council. Standards of education and proficiency are the responsibility of the statutorily independent professional regulators.
Individual employers are responsible for appropriate ongoing training and continuing professional development to ensure they continue to provide safe and effective care. NHS England and other organisations support employers and the NHS workforce by providing and signposting to evidence‑based training resources on weight management. These include programmes that incorporate behavioural approaches, and in some cases psychological elements, available through platforms such as e‑Learning for Healthcare, the Royal College of General Practitioners Obesity Hub, and the Strategic Centre for Obesity Professional Education programme.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to publish national dementia outcomes for neighbourhood health services requiring integrated care boards to demonstrate timely access to specialist, community-based dementia support.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In developing the Modern Service Framework for Frailty and Dementia, we are engaging with a wide group of partners to understand what should be included to ensure the best outcomes for people living with dementia. As part of this exercise, we are considering all options to help reduce variation, including reviewing metrics and targets.
The Neighbourhood Health Service will be the driving force behind our new Genomics Population Health Service; and data will increasingly allow Neighbourhood Health Services to deliver genuinely predictive and pre-emptive care, transforming our care model entirely.
NHS England already collect and publish data about people with dementia at each general practice in England, to enable National Health Service general practitioners and commissioners to make informed choices about how to plan their dementia services around patients’ needs.
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities Dementia Intelligence Network has also developed a tool for local systems, which includes an assessment of population characteristics such as rurality and socio-economic deprivation. This enables systems to investigate local variation in diagnosis and take informed action to enhance their diagnosis rates. The tool is available via the NHS Futures Collaboration platform.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what processes are in place for families to seek remedial action against GPs who fail to correctly diagnose patients who shortly afterwards pass away.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
If a family wishes to make a formal complaint about services provided by a general practice, they should write to the practice manager. If the family is not comfortable raising a complaint directly, they can instead raise their concerns with their local National Health Service integrated care board, with NHS England or with their local Healthwatch, the independent consumer champion for health and social care. Further information about the NHS complaints procedure and Healthwatch can be found, respectively, at the following two links:
www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/about-the-nhs/how-to-complain-to-the-nhs
Asked by: James Cartlidge (Conservative - South Suffolk)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to utilise existing community-based musculoskeletal healthcare providers to reduce GP workload and NHS waiting lists.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
To reduce the general practice workload and National Health Service waiting lists, we are working to deliver the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) Musculoskeletal Community Delivery Programme. GIRFT teams are working with health system leaders to further reduce musculoskeletal community waiting times, which are the largest volume of all community waits, and improve data, metrics, and referral pathways to wider support services. This includes mapping and analysing the provision and role of physiotherapists as First Contact Practitioners in primary care.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what reasonable adjustments are in place for people with disabilities to access GPs without going through telephone services.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
General practices (GP) are independent businesses contracted by the National Health Service to deliver essential services. As part of their contract, practices must provide online consultation tools. Online consultation tools are designed to accommodate a wide range of patient needs, including improving access to people with disabilities, making it easier for patients to book appointments, request prescriptions, and register remotely.
Since 1 October, GPs now must offer online access during core hours, from 08:00 to 18:30, bringing online access in line with walk-in and access, to improve convenience and reduce phone queues.
After a decade of declining satisfaction, patient experiences with contacting their GP have improved significantly. As of December 2025, 75.2% of patients report that they find it is easy to contact their GP, a 14.3% increase since July 2024, from 60.9%
Our approach is not a one size fits all. The GP Contract is also clear that all online tools must always be provided in addition to, rather than as a replacement for, other channels for accessing a GP. This means that patients should always have the option visiting their practice in person, or telephoning.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the press release entitled Patients in poorer areas to get better access to GPs, published on 9 October 2025, how funding will change in Bedfordshire.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is vital that funding for core primary medical services is distributed equitably between general practices (GPs) across the country so that resources are targeted where they are most needed. In October 2025 we launched a review of the GP funding formula (The Carr-Hill Formula), with the objective of better matching funding with higher need from poorer health.
Through our 10-Year Health Plan, it will be easier and faster to see a GP. We will end the 8:00am scramble for appointments, train more doctors, and guarantee consultations within 24 hours for those who need one. In October 2024, we invested £160 million into the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme to support the recruitment of 2,900 individual GPs into primary care networks across England, helping to increase appointment availability and improve care for thousands of patients. The new £102 million Primary Care Utilisation and Modernisation Fund will create additional clinical space within over 1,000 GPs across England. This investment will deliver more appointments and improve patient care. There are 13 approved schemes across the NHS Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB being supported by the fund.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many asylum seekers are registered with a GP by (a) day and (b) month of birth.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Data on the number of asylum seekers registered with a general practice (GP) is not held centrally. Data on the number of patients registered at a GP in England is published on a monthly basis and can be found at the following link:
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of introducing mandatory training for GPs on (a) identifying symptoms and (b) offering treatment for the Menopause.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We know that more needs to be done to support women experiencing the menopause. This Government is committed to prioritising women’s health as we reform the NHS.
General practitioners are responsible for ensuring their own clinical knowledge, including on menopause, remains up-to-date and for identifying learning needs as part of their continuing professional development. This activity should include taking account of new research and developments in guidance, such as that produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), to ensure that they can continue to provide high quality care to all patients.
All United Kingdom registered doctors are expected to meet the professional standards set out in the General Medical Council’s (GMC’s) Good Medical Practice. The training curriculum for postgraduate trainee doctors is set by the Royal College of General Practitioners and has to meet the standards set by the GMC.
NICE published its updated guideline in November 2024 and recommended more treatment choices for menopause symptoms. The updated guideline aims to support healthcare professionals by providing them with information they need to support evidence-based decisions about treatment choices, as well as information and support about menopause. The guideline recommends hormone replacement therapy (HRT) as the most effective treatment for vasomotor symptoms, and also recommends that for people aged over 40 years old, healthcare professionals should consider menopause-specific cognitive behavioural therapy as an option for vasomotor symptoms associated with menopause in addition to HRT. HRT is the main treatment for menopause symptoms, and NICE recommends that for most women it is safe and effective.
Asked by: Patrick Spencer (Independent - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average wait time is for a patient to see a GP in (a) England and (b) by integrated care board.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England publishes monthly data on general practice appointments, including the approximate length of time between appointments being booked and taking place, at a national and integrated care board level, although this is not a proxy for “waiting times”.
Several factors can affect when appointments take place, for example, patients may choose to book routine check-ups in advance for their own convenience. It is not possible to estimate the time between the patient’s first attempt to contact their surgery and an appointment.
Nationally, in November 2025, 43.1% of appointments were delivered on the same day, and 81.2% were delivered within two weeks. In the NHS Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board, 42.7% of appointments were delivered on the same day, 0.4 percentage points below the national average. 79.5% were delivered within two weeks, 1.7 percentage points below the national figure.