Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average cost to the NHS has been of employing a midwife on a full-time basis in each of the last five years.

The Department’s estimates of the average cost to the National Health Service employing one midwife at a full-time equivalent (FTE) are set out in the following table in each of the last five years. These costs include total earnings, national insurance and pension contributions.

Source: The Department’s Headline HCHS pay bill metrics, which are based primarily on earnings statistics published by NHS Digital, supplemented by employer pension and national insurance contributions estimates informed by unpublished and unvalidated data from the Electronic Staff Record Data Warehouse.

Pay bill per FTE levels do not depend solely on pay policy and pay awards. They also reflect patterns in those leaving and joining the workforce and the impact this has on average experience and pay levels, and they reflect patterns in non-basic earnings such as overtime which can fluctuate.