Kevin Foster – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Foster on 2016-09-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make a comparative assessment of the average earnings for hospital and community health service doctors and the average earnings for workers in professional occupations in each age band.

Mr Philip Dunne

The best available comparison for 2015 is shown in the table below. The figures are for doctors employed by the NHS Hospital and Community Health Service in England (HCHS) and are based on NHS Earnings Estimates published by NHS Digital. General practitioners (GPs) are not included. The All Professional Occupations figures represent all employees nationally in Professional Occupations, as published by the Office for National Statistics.

Sources: All Professional Occupations earnings statistics published by the Office for National Statistics, from its 2015 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.

HCHS Doctors earnings figures are based on statistics published by NHS Digital, from NHS Electronic Staff Record data, in NHS Staff Earnings Estimates to December 2015. The NHS Electronic Staff Record is the HR and Payroll system used by almost all National Health Service trusts and foundation trusts in England.

Both sets of figures are the estimated mean average total earnings in 2015 of employees who worked for the full year, regardless of their working hours (i.e. this includes both full-time and part-time workers). The figures do not include GPs.

Equivalent figures are not available for GPs, because most provide services through commissioning rather than direct employment.

The ‘All Professional Occupations’ group covers occupations whose main tasks require a high level of knowledge and experience in the natural sciences, engineering, life sciences, social sciences, humanities and related fields. The main tasks consist of the practical application of an extensive body of theoretical knowledge, increasing the stock of knowledge by means of research and communicating such knowledge by teaching methods and other means.

Most occupations in this major group will require a degree or equivalent qualification, with some occupations requiring postgraduate qualifications and/or a formal period of experience-related.