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 likelihood of achieving the target to recruit 6000 more GPs by 2024.

We remain committed to increasing the general practitioner (GP) workforce as soon as possible. In March 2022, there were an additional 1,462 full time equivalent doctors in general practice compared to March 2019.

We are working with NHS England, Health Education England and the profession to increase the number of GPs in England through recruitment, addressing the reasons why doctors leave the profession and encourage GPs to return to practice. The 2020 updated GP Contract Framework announced a number of new retention schemes alongside continued support for existing schemes. We have increased the number of GP training places, with 4,000 doctors accepting a place in 2021/22 – an increase from 2,671 in 2014.