Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an estimate of the proportion of GPs who offer phone consultation appointments instead of face to face appointments; and if he will make a statement.

General practices determine the most appropriate appointment mode for their patients based on clinical needs. The National Health Service is clear that general practices must provide face to face appointments, alongside remote consultations, and patients’ input into consultation type should be sought and their preferences for face-to-face care respected unless there are good clinical reasons to the contrary.

Face-to-face alongside remote appointments provide a choice of access routes for patients and additional flexibility and convenience. We expect patients to experience the same high quality of care regardless of how they access their general practice, and patients unable to access remote appointments should be offered an alternative appointment type.

The proportion of face-to-face appointments were 70.0% in April 2023, compared to April 2022, it is up by 7.1 percentage points. The proportion of telephone appointments were 26.3% in April 2023, compared to April 2022, it is down by 6.7 percentage points.