Westminster More than one in three GP surgeries are opening in the evenings and at weekends, a survey has found, amid complaints that ministers are imposing extended hours on doctors.

The research by the Healthcare Commission said that one in four patients – equivalent to ten million people – still struggled to get an appointment at a convenient time. But 37.8 per cent of practices were offering extended hours last month, compared with 28.1 per cent in June.

The Government said that the figures showed marked progress towards its target of at least half the country’s GP practices opening an extra three hours a week by the end of the year, agreed after acrimonious negotiations with doctors.

Mark Simmonds, a Conservative health spokesman, said that while extending hours could help patients, ministers “should not centrally prescribe how long GP surgeries should be open for”. Doctors should instead determine access and opening hours “in response to their patients’ needs”, he said.

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