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 effectiveness of his Department's primary care plan in reducing pressure on GP surgeries.

Our Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care, published on 9 May 2023, builds on innovative work already happening in general practice and incorporates new measures designed to ease the pressure on practices and improve patient experiences of services.

We are retargeting existing funding to help general practices (GPs), with £240 million going to provide digital tools, telephony and training. Practices that have fully implemented this Modern General Practice Access approach have overall patient experience scores on average six percentage points higher than the national average, and case studies show these gains can be much higher.

We will also make better use of the clinical capacity within community pharmacies so they can play a larger role in delivery of primary care, helping to take the pressure off GPs and providing patients with more options for care. We expect this to free up around 10 million GP appointments per year by 2024/25.