Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the age profile is of midwives at the (a) most recent date for which figures are available and (b) the equivalent date in each year since 2010.

NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) workforce statistics. 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.

The attached table shows the number of registered midwives by five-year age band in National Health Service trusts and CCGs in England as at 31 May of each specified year, headcount.

The following table shows the number of registered midwives, and those who are aged 70 or older, working in NHS trusts and CCGs in each of the two years, headcount:

Source: NHS HCHS monthly workforce statistics, NHS Digital

There are also more than 6,000 midwives in training, and we have also announced plans to train more than 3,000 extra midwives over four years.