UK Edition
The Government's pledge to boost GP ranks by 5,000 has fallen short by over 90%, new NHS figures have shown.
The Government's pledge to boost GP ranks by 5,000 has fallen short by over 90%, new NHS figures have shown.
In 2015, former Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, pledged that they would raise the number of full-time-equivalent GPs in the NHS up from 34,492 in September that year.
However the latest statistics only showed a rise of 370, only 7% of what the Government had hoped to achieve.
The current Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, was last year forced to concede that meeting the target had “proved difficult” while the Department for Health insisted that the pledge would be delivered ‘'as soon as possible'.
GP groups said that the figures required ‘serious action’, and that the number of non-trainee GPs had actually fallen by more than 1,000 during this time.
Dr Richard Vautrey, British Medical Association GP committee chair, said: “The real picture for GP numbers is far worse than the one painted by today’s statistics.
“These include trainee GPS, who should, in reality, be focusing on learning rather than being used to prop up staff shortages and make the numbers look better. This is protected in their contract.”
Professor Martin Marshall, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “We have 340 fewer full-time equivalent GPs than we did a year ago, and more than 1,000 fewer than we did in 2015.
“These numbers are going in the wrong direction - this is disappointing, it is serious and we need to see drastic action taken to reverse this trend.”
According to the General Medical Council, 9,421 GPs have left the profession and given up their right to practice since 2015.
Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said: "These new figures highlight the ongoing crisis in primary care, and come after almost a decade of NHS mismanagement under the Tories.
“General Practice is absolutely key to keeping people well and relieving wider pressures on the NHS, but our GPs are overworked and under resourced with many experiencing burn out.
“Only Labour has a credible £40bn cash rescue plan for the NHS that will invest in primary care and train 5000 GPs a year.”