Health secretary will commission review to pinpoint GP shortages

The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has announced that he will commission an independent review of how many additional GPs are required across the country, as he seeks to ease the current workforce crisis in primary care.

In a keynote address to the Royal College of General Practitioners’ annual conference in Liverpool on 2 October, Hunt announced that he would commission the report from Health Education England. This followed his pledge to train and retain an extra 5000 GPs, which he made at the Conservative Party conference on 30 September. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has pledged an additional 8000 GPs.1

In his speech to the assembled GPs, Hunt said that he wanted to commission …