Written question asked by Luke Evans (Conservative) on Wednesday, 2 September 2026, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Friday, 4 September 2026. It was answered by Karin Smyth (Labour) on Tuesday, 8 September 2026 on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care.
Health Services: Advisory Services
- Question
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To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department will accept the recommendation by the Health Services Safety Investigations Body that NHS England and the Department undertake a rapid evaluation of Advice and Guidance services.
- Answer
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The Advice and Guidance (A&G) model helps ensure that patients receive an appropriate and timely assessment, with clear next steps, in primary and community settings. Where specialist advice supports ongoing management in the community, patients can often be managed more quickly and closer to home, benefiting from earlier specialist input.
Under this Government, the A&G model has therefore supported millions of patients to receive care in the right place without unnecessarily having to join elective waiting lists, alongside the 2,000 extra general practitioners (GPs) we have recruited since July 2024. This is one of the reasons 77% of patients are now reporting a ‘good’ overall experience with their GP.
Under A&G, the clinical threshold for a referral remains unchanged, and GPs should continue to make a clinical decision to refer for specialist care where that is in the patient’s best interest. We will continue to assess the safety of the model and support providers to implement it effectively, and we have already commissioned an external evaluation of A&G, and Single Point of Access processes.
Secondary information
- Type
- Written question
- Reference
- 26651
- Session
- 2026-27
- Related items
- Grouped for answer
- Yes
- Subjects
- Advisory services Health services
- Link
- View this Written question on www.parliament.uk
Librarians' tools
- Timestamp
- 2026-10-12 10:55:45 +0100
- URI
- http://data.parliament.uk/writtenparliamentaryquestion/commons/2026-27/26651
- In Indexing
- http://indexing.parliament.uk/Content/Edit/1?uri=http://data.parliament.uk/writtenparliamentaryquestion/commons/2026-27/26651
- In Solr
- https://search.parliament.uk/claw/solr/?id=http://data.parliament.uk/writtenparliamentaryquestion/commons/2026-27/26651