Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Royal College of General Practitioners report entitled Fit for the Future GP Pressures 2023, published in March 2023, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of telephony support in general practice.

Cloud-based telephony systems can support practices by offering more phone lines for inbound and outbound calls and automated queuing, as well as providing data about patient demand to help give feedback about current performance and inform practices about the level of administrative support they need for call-handling.

NHS England has already offered practices a short-term telephony solution and is accelerating work to support all general practices (GPs) to procure cloud-based telephony systems. The updated GP contract for 2023/24 will also require practices to move to a cloud-based telephony framework when their existing telephony contracts end.