Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many temporary registered doctors there have been since March 2020; and how many of those doctors have been used by the NHS.

The General Medical Council (GMC) granted temporary emergency registration to 34,837 doctors between March and April 2020 in response to the pandemic. The GMC used an opt-out model for granting temporary registration, so the vast majority of eligible doctors were issued temporary registration at that point. To 2 September 2021, 605 doctors who were not included in the original cohorts have been granted temporary registration.

The Department does not hold the information on how many of these doctors were subsequently employed within the National Health Service. Doctors were employed both directly by the NHS, but also through agencies, and in private sector providers.