Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, for how many hospital shifts a full complement of staff was not available in each of the last five years.

The Department does not hold this information.

All National Health Service providers of regulated activities have to register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and follow a set of fundamental standards of safety and quality below which care should never fall. One of the fundamental standards relates to staffing and requires that a provider must have sufficient numbers of suitability qualified, competent, skilled and experienced persons in order to meet the requirements of residents.

The CQC has a wide range of enforcement powers that it can use if the provider is not does not meet the fundamental standards.