Nurses: Pay
(asked on 17th December 2018) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many NHS nurses in England earn less than £30,000 per year; and what proportion of all NHS nurses in England this represents.
NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) workforce statistics for England. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), but not staff working in primary care or in general practitioner surgeries, local authorities or other providers.
Nurses’ earnings are made up of basic pay plus, where applicable, unsocial hours payments, on call payments and high cost area supplements.
The latest figures at June 2018 show that almost 60% of nurses receive unsocial hours payments in addition to their basic pay.
The following table shows nurses and health visitors whose total annual earnings is under £30,000, in National Health Service trusts, CCGs, support organisations and central bodies in England, between 31 July 2017 and 30 June 2018, headcount and percentage:
All nurses and health visitors | Nurses and health visitors whose total annual earnings are under £30,000 | Proportion of nurses and health visitors whose total annual earnings are under £30,000 |
258,676 | 107,715 | 41.6% |
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.
Basic pay data has been extracted at a point in time, whereas total earnings include data from staff working throughout the period. This explains the discrepancies in the total number of nurses and health visitors.