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 impact of the GP contract changes on (a) patient safety, (b) primary‑care capacity and (c) workload transferred to general practice prior to its implementation on 1 April 2026.

The Department and NHS England considered the potential risks, benefits, and wider impact of the policy changes as part of standard policy-development processes and Equalities Impact Assessments.

No immediate negative impacts have been identified from these policies. If any are identified at a later stage, the Department will consider and review them. The changes are intended to improve access to general practices (GPs), build workforce capacity, and strengthen prevention. They include measures to increase GP capacity, including a new practice-level GP reimbursement scheme and greater flexibility to recruit GPs through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme.

We are routinely collecting data on workforce, patient access, and service use to inform the assessment of impacts.