Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many NHS staff were made redundant and subsequently re-employed by NHS organisations on a (a) permanent basis and (b) fixed-term contract basis since May 2010.

The table below shows the number of redundancies from 2010/11 financial year to 2016/17 financial year and those subsequently re-employed up to the end of September 2017. As time goes by the numbers of those returning is likely to increase in relation to those made redundant in previous years.

Notes:

These estimates are derived from un-validated data from the Electronic Staff Record (ESR) Data Warehouse, and so only cover redundancies from, and re-employment to, those organisation that use ESR. The ESR Data Warehouse is a monthly snap shot of the live ESR system, which is the HR and payroll system that covers all National Health Service employees other than those working in general practice, two NHS foundation trusts that have chosen not to use the system, and organisations to which functions have been transferred, such as local authorities. The ESR data used to derive these figures is not centrally validated and its reliability is subject to local coding practice. Redundancies are identified by staff records with a reason for leaving coded as either voluntary or compulsory redundancy. Returners are identified as those with an assignment start date subsequent to their date of redundancy from records of joiners. Only those recorded as returning prior to the end of September 2017 are counted. These estimate only the numbers of individuals who have returned to NHS employment subsequent to redundancy. Information on redundancy payments, and subsequent repayment, is not held centrally and would only be available from local employers.