Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate his Department has made of the number of carers on zero-hours contracts.

The Department does not collect this information centrally.

Terms and conditions of employment for social care workers are essentially a matter for local employers within the existing requirements of employment legislation.

Skills for Care, the partner in the sector skills council for social care, in England, collects information on the number of adult social care workers in England on zero-hours contracts.

The National Minimum Data Set for Social Care 2013 and Skills for Care workforce shows that there are an estimated 250,000 adult social care workers on zero-hours contracts.