Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 7 September to Question 45643, what data her Department regularly requires from the GMC on the number of currently licensed doctors, for the purposes of NHS workforce planning.

The General Medical Council (GMC) is the independent regulator of all medical doctors practising in the United Kingdom which sets and enforces the standards all doctors must adhere to. The GMC is responsible for operational matters, including holding data on the number of currently licensed doctors. The Department does not require the GMC to provide data on the number of currently licensed doctors for National Health Service workforce planning.

However, the Department accesses data published by the GMC, including at its online archive at the following link:

https://www.gmc-uk.org/about/what-we-do-and-why/data-and-research