Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the additional requirements of general practice in rural areas.

Capitation payments to practices include a formula weighting for rurality. We also recognise there are issues with recruitment and retention in some rural locations. The Targeted Enhanced Recruitment Scheme offers a £20,000 salary supplement to attract general practitioner trainees to work in areas of the country in which training places have been unfilled for a number of years.

Additionally, NHS England and NHS Improvement have allowed commissioners to waive the Primary Care Network (PCN) minimum population where a PCN serves a community with a low population density across a large rural and remote area.