Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of workers who work more than their contracted hours.

There are no official data sources that provide readily available estimates of the number of contracted hours across the whole labour market. The Office for National Statistics regularly publishes estimates of the number of people on zero hours contracts, where all hours worked are additional to contracted hours: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/emp17peopleinemploymentonzerohourscontracts.

The government has published a comprehensive assessment of the potential impacts of the zero hours contract measures in the Employment Rights Act 2025: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/employment-rights-bill-impact-assessments. We will publish further analysis in due course as we implement those measures.