Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether her Department plans to take steps to review the health and wellbeing impact of night-time shift working; and if she will take steps to create a working group on this issue with industry stakeholders.

The Working Time Regulations provide specific protections to night workers. Before someone starts working at night, they must be offered a free health assessment to see if they are fit to work nights before they become a night worker and on a regular basis after that. A record of this must be kept by the employer. Employers must also make sure that night time workers do not work more than an average of 8 hours in a 24-hour period. Employers can make collective or workforce agreements to change or exclude this limit.