Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the average number of hours worked by (a) nurses, (b) junior doctors and (c) consultants in each year for which records are available.

To support contract reform, estimates have been made of the number of hours worked by junior doctors and consultants. The estimated average hours worked by junior doctors was 46 hours and for consultants it was estimated that they work an average 11.5 programmed activity (PA) sessions per week. A PA is four hours long if worked Monday to Friday between 7am and 7pm and three hours long if worked outside those hours.

Although the Electronic Staff Record does collect data on the number of hours worked it does not clearly show the full extent of additional work carried out by National Health Service staff, therefore in respect of nurses the question cannot be answered, as nurses also work via bank arrangements.

Information is not available on an annual basis for any of these groups.