Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that people are able to access face to face appointments with GPs.

We are investing at least £1.5 billion to create an additional 50 million general practice appointments by 2024 by growing and diversifying the workforce. We have recruited over 29,000 additional primary care staff, and there are nearly 2,000 more doctors in general practice compared to 2019. In the twelve months to April 2023, there were 346.8 million appointments booked across England, up by 38.9 million compared to the twelve months up to April 2019.

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. The proportion of face-to-face appointments were 70.0% in April 2023, compared to April 2022 (62.9%) it is up by 7.1 percentage points.