Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will work with GPs to help tackle the increased pressures on general practice; and if he will take steps to ensure that general practices are supported to deal with the additional pressures that result from winter.

On 14 October we published ‘Our plan for improving access for patients and supporting general practice’ to assist patients to see or speak to general practitioners and their teams, through a new £250 million Winter Access Fund.

We have committed additional funding to NHS England to implement the adoption of cloud-based telephony technology across all practices. These systems can benefit patients by making more phone lines available and providing automated queueing, and allow practices determine the administrative support they need for call handling.