Fact check: GP numbers and the dangers of sunbeds

This roundup of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK’s largest fact-checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.

How many more GPs has the Government recruited?

In recent months the Government has made many claims about the number of extra GPs it has recruited to the health service in England.

Between October and December last year, the Prime Minister, Health Secretary and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) all said the Government had put more than 2,500 additional GPs into general practice.

And the figure has risen since then. In Parliament last month, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy claimed the Government had “recruited 3,000 more GPs”.

But has it? That depends on what you think the Government means — because the actual rise in the overall number of full-time GPs in the NHS is smaller.

The Government’s figures refer to the number of GPs hired through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS).

This scheme allows primary care networks (groups of neighbouring GP practices) to hire more staff by covering their salaries and some other costs. From October 2024 onwards the Government expanded the scheme to include recently qualified GPs.

And it is true that the figures up to the end of September 2025 show a total of 2,533 GPs were confirmed to have been hired under the scheme since its expansion, while in more recent data up to the end of December 2025, this total had risen to 3,073.

But these numbers are headcounts, so they include GPs hired on a part-time basis. The actual number of full-time equivalent (FTE) GPs claimed for under the scheme is less.

The headcount figure also represents the total number of GPs recruited under ARRS over the entire period, so it counts some who are not currently employed under the scheme.

What’s more, these figures only count GPs hired through ARRS, not those recruited in other ways. And GPs are also leaving their jobs at the same time, so the total number available for work in the NHS does not simply rise by the total that are hired.

Figuring out the total number of working GPs can get complicated, because of the way the data is collected and reported. But quarterly data from NHS England shows that the number of fully qualified FTE GPs in the NHS rose by 1,347 in the year to September 2025.

When we asked the DHSC why it quotes a headcount figure for the number of GPs recruited via ARRS, rather than an overall figure for the net change in full-time equivalent GPs, a spokesperson told us: “We currently have the highest number of fully qualified GPs since at least 2015 thanks to actions taken by this Government.

“We are making progress to reverse more than a decade of neglect of primary care, with patient satisfaction with GP services rising and 3,000 GPs recruited into work in the past year.”

Government publishes misleading information about the dangers of sunbeds

Announcing proposals for stricter rules on the use of sunbeds last month, the DHSC claimed they are “as dangerous as smoking”.

This is not supported by the evidence the department used. It is also misleading, according to the experts we spoke to.

The Government made the claim in posts on Instagram, Facebook and X, where it was shared by both NHS England and the Health Secretary. The DHSC also published an official announcement which said: “The World Health Organisation (WHO) has classed sunbeds to be as dangerous as smoking.”

The DHSC told us the source of the claim was a statement from the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2009 on the classification of sunbeds as a cancer-causing hazard.

This classification examines the evidence on whether different things cause cancer in people, and assigns them to groups according to how certain we can be about it.

Group 1 lists the agents known to be “human carcinogens”, ie cancer-causing, and includes obvious things such as smoking, asbestos and plutonium, which are known to be very dangerous.

But it also includes things such as eating processed meat, being a firefighter or a painter, and alcoholic drinks — all of which do raise people’s risk of cancer at least slightly, but not necessarily to the same extent.

The 2009 WHO statement announced that “UV-emitting tanning devices” (or sunbeds) had been added to group 1. This does mean that they and smoking are both known to cause cancer — but not that they are necessarily equally likely to, or that they are equally risky overall.

Comparing the dangers of sunbeds and smoking is not easy to do precisely. You would have to think about how many cigarettes or sunbed sessions people have, as well as when they started, and what the different health effects might be.

In broad terms, however, there are good reasons to think that smoking is much more dangerous than using sunbeds.

The research on which IARC based its decision found that using sunbeds before the age of 30 raises the risk of skin cancer by 75%. Clearly this is an important risk to consider, but the general risks from smoking seem to be far greater.

For example, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention says: “People who smoke cigarettes are 15 to 30 times more likely to get lung cancer or die from lung cancer than people who do not smoke.”

In percentage terms that would mean smoking raises the risk of this cancer by 1,400-2,900%.

Smoking causes many other types of cancers too, as well as other serious health problems such as heart and circulatory disease and breathing problems.

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, an expert on the public understanding of risk, told us: “Smoking and sunbeds are both hazards, as they both have the potential to cause cancer, which is what IARC are measuring. But that does not mean they present equal risks, since smoking is far more likely to harm you.

“Driving at 30mph and 90mph are both hazards, since both could lead to an accident, but the fast driver is at far more risk. So for anyone to say that ‘sunbeds are as dangerous as smoking’ not only displays a real ignorance of what IARC classifications mean, but is also deeply misleading.”

Cancer Research UK told us that the IARC classification of sunbeds and smoking “doesn’t mean they cause the same number of cases of cancer”, adding: “Tobacco has a much bigger impact on cancer cases.”

And Kevin McConway, professor emeritus of applied statistics at the Open University and an adviser to Full Fact, told us “it’s wrong to conclude that (sunbeds and smoking) are equally dangerous from the IARC classification”, adding that smoking is “way, way more dangerous just in terms of cancers”.

The DHSC has acknowledged the issue. It told us it believed the wording of its claim could have been clearer to avoid a false equivalence of danger between tobacco and sunbeds.

It said it would use clearer wording in future, but at the time of writing it does not appear to have corrected or deleted any examples of the claim.