Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many general practice speciality training posts were (a) commissioned and (b) filled in (i) 2014-15 and (ii) 2015-16 to date.

In 2014 Health Education England commissioned 3,067 General Practitioner (GP) specialty training posts, and 2,671 were filled.

GP recruitment rounds for 2015 are still being conducted with the third and final round set for completion in November. Figures for rounds one and two are subject to validation, along with round three figures. Once all rounds are complete and validated final data will be published by Health Education England.

Recruitment and selection has not yet commenced for 2016.

As part of a New Deal for General Practice, the Government has committed to increasing the primary and community care workforce by 10,000 by 2020, including an additional 5,000 doctors working in general practice. To support this, NHS England, Health Education England, the Royal College of GPs and the British Medical Association published Building the Workforce in January 2015, which sets out plans to increase the size of the general practice workforce, backed by £10 million of funding. This includes actions to boost recruitment, encourage experienced GPs to stay in the workforce, and support GPs to return to practice after a period of time out of the workforce.