Department of Health written question – answered at on 8 September 2015.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to his speech at Nelson Medical Practice, London, of 19 June 2015, entitled A New Deal for General Practice, how he plans to increase by 5,000 the number of GPs working in England.
In his speech of 19 June 2015, my Rt. Hon. friend the Secretary of State set out a range of steps that the Government will take to ensure an additional 5,000 doctors working in general practice by 2020.
In January 2015, Health Education England (HEE), alongside NHS England, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Medical Association’s General Practitioners Committee jointly published Building the Workforce – the new deal for general practice which set out an action plan to increase general practitioner (GP) numbers. This includes measures on recruitment to GP training:
- conducting a campaign this summer targeted at recruitment to GP training in the autumn;
- scoping the use of an additional year of training post-award of the Certificate of Completion of Training for candidates seeking to work in geographies which historically have had difficulties recruiting trainees;
- investing an extra £1 billion in new primary care infrastructure which will enable increased training capacity and a more positive experience for medical students and foundation year doctors within general practice; and
- establishing a number of hubs/networks providing new education and training models for the whole workforce within community and primary care settings.
Alongside this, the Government’s mandate to HEE requires them to ensure that 3,250 trainee doctors enter GP training programmes by 2016. This will enable further increases in the GP workforce across England.
Building the Workforce also includes measures on retention and supporting GPs to return to practice. A copy of this is attached.
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