Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether he has made an assessment of the implications for his policies of the proportion of GP practices that responded to a BMA survey stating that they would consider temporarily suspending new patient registration in order to focus on delivering safe care to patients already on their practice lists.

The Government understand the pressures that general practitioners (GPs) face and regularly discusses issues related to general practice with the British Medical Association.

The Government is working to increase capacity in general practice. The General Practice Forward View set out plans for an extra 5,000 doctors working in general practice by 2020, as well as a minimum of 5,000 other staff – including mental health therapists, practice nurses and clinical pharmacists. In addition, a number of initiatives have been launched to help reduce practice workload and free up time for GPs to provide care to their patients.