Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average salary was of an NHS (a) nurse, (b) midwife and (c) health visitor in (i) the latest period for which figures are available and (ii) each year since 1997.

NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) workforce statistics for England. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups, but not staff working in primary care or in general practitioner surgeries, local authorities or other providers.

The data provided is based on information from the Electronic Staff Record which is the HR and Payroll system that has been used throughout the NHS since 2009. This information is not available for the period 1997 to 2009.

The attached table shows average annual earnings for nurses, health visitors and midwives, in NHS trusts in England, between October 2009 and September 2018 (headcount) alongside average annual basic pay per full time equivalent (FTE).

Nurses and midwives earnings are made up of basic pay plus, where applicable, unsocial hours payments, on call payments and high cost area supplements.

These figures use the total annual earnings of staff which includes basic pay and non-basic pay elements. These total figures include staff working on a part time basis, who tend to have lower annual earnings than those on full time contracts. As at May 2017, around 35% of the nursing workforce were on part time contracts.

The attached table shows the total number of nurses, health visitors and midwives and those who work part time.