Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full-time equivalent General Practitioners were working in the NHS in England in (a) 2016 and (b) 2022.

The following table shows the number of full time equivalent (FTE) doctors in general practice as at March 2022 and March 2016.

Notes:

1. Figures contain estimates for practices that did not provide fully valid records.
2. It is not recommended that comparisons be made between quarterly or monthly figures due to the unknown effect of seasonality on workforce numbers. Therefore, the latest comparable data available is March 2022.
3. FTE refers to the proportion of full time contracted hours that the post holder is contracted to work. 1 would indicate they work a full set of hours (37.5), 0.5 that they worked half time. In GPs in Training Grade contracts 1 FTE = 40 hours and in this table these FTEs have been converted to the standard wMDS measure of 1 FTE = 37.5 hours for consistency.
4. Figures shown do not include staff working in prisons, army bases, educational establishments, specialist care centres including drug rehabilitation centres, walk-in centres and other alternative settings outside of traditional general practice such as urgent treatment centres and minor injury units.
5. Figures from the March 2016 should be treated with caution as the data submission rates from practices were appreciably lower than for subsequent reporting periods. This means that the reported figures for the early years of the collection may be lower.