Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make it her policy to maintain the requirement for every primary care network to provide a social prescribing service in the next GP contract and Primary Care Network Direct Enhanced Service specification.

As per the commitment set out in the Changes to the GP Contract in 2023/24, we have engaged the profession, patients, integrated care systems, and other key stakeholders over the summer via an Expert Advisory Group, to inform the future general practitioner contract. Changes to the 2024/25 contract are subject to consultation with the British Medical Association General Practitioners Committee.

To meet the ambitions for social prescribing as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan we are continuing to roll out social prescribing link workers across the National Health Service and have exceeded the first target of 1,000 link workers by March 2021. As of September 2023, there were 3,599 full-time equivalent link workers in place.