Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department plans to take to sustain the independent contractor status of GP partnerships through the 10 Year Health Plan.

GP partnerships are independent businesses, contracting with the NHS to deliver primary care services. We recognise that the GP partnership model has many strengths, including efficiency, innovation and continuity of care, and GP partnerships deliver high-quality care to patients all over the country. As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, where the GP partnership model is working well, it should continue.

The 10-Year Health Plan also introduces two new contracts enabling GPs to work over larger geographies, with the aim of supporting the neighbourhood health model, providing resilience and allowing economies of scale, in order to secure the sustainability of general practice into the future.

The first will create ‘single neighbourhood providers’ that deliver enhanced services for groups with similar needs over a single neighbourhood (c.50,000 people). The second will create ‘multi-neighbourhood providers’, which will deliver care that requires working across several different neighbourhoods (250,000+ people).

Multi-neighbourhood providers will also be responsible for unlocking the benefits of at scale working, including offering improvement support to practices, easing administrative burdens through shared back-office functions and overseeing digital transformation and estate strategy.