Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the proportion of GPs work taken up by administration; and what changes there have been in that proportion in the last five years.

There is no official survey of the proportion of general practitioners (GPs) workload taken up by administration. However, the Department and NHS England take account of feedback from a range of sources including the GP worklife survey, feedback from individual GPs and also from their professional representatives.

There were important changes to the GP contract this year to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy. More than a third of indicators were removed from the Quality and Outcomes Framework in order to free up time to allow GPs to provide more proactive, holistic care, particularly for older people and those with more complex needs.