Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what proportion of people in England and Wales are waiting for a week or more for an appointment with a GP; and what steps he is taking to decrease the length of such waits.

The data on waiting times to see a general practitioner (GP) in England is not held centrally. The waiting times to see a GP in Wales is a matter for the Welsh Assembly.

The Prime Minister’s Access Fund has so far invested £175 million (including £25 million from the £1 billion Infrastructure Fund) in 57 schemes in England covering over 2,500 practices. This means that a third of the country (over 18 million patients) will have benefitted from improved access and transformational change at local level by March 2016. These schemes include longer opening times, such as evenings and weekends, but also different ways of accessing services, such as online and by telephone.