Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure GP practices have the resources they need to recruit and retain the staff required to offer appointments to all patients within two weeks.

We are working with NHS England and Health Education England to increase the general practice workforce in England. This includes measures to increase recruitment, address the reasons why doctors leave the profession and encourage them to return to practice. The updated GP Contract Framework in 2020 announced new retention schemes with continued support for existing schemes for the general practice workforce. In addition, we have increased the number of general practitioner training places to 4,000 per year.

We made £520 million available to improve access and expand general practice capacity during the pandemic. This was in addition to at least £1.5 billion announced in 2020 to create an additional 50 million general practice appointments by 2024 by increasing and diversifying the workforce.