To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress his Department has made on its commitment to recruiting an additional 6,000 GPs.
Answered on
16 November 2022
As of September 2022, there were approximately 2,300 additional full time equivalent doctors working in general practice compared to September 2019. We are working with NHS England and Health Education England to increase recruitment, address the reasons why doctors leave, and encourage them to return to practice.
We have increased the number of general practitioner (GP) training places to 4,000 per year. The 2020 updated GP Contract Framework announced a number of new retention schemes alongside continued support for existing schemes for the general practice workforce. Since 2019 we have also recruited over 19,305 additional staff into general practice covering a range of roles, such as clinical pharmacists.