Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many midwives started working in the NHS in each of the last five years.

NHS England publishes Hospital and Community Health Services workforce statistics for England. This covers staff working for hospital trusts and integrated care in England. This data is drawn from the Electronic Staff Record, the human resources system for the National Health Service. The published data includes information on the turnover of staff, including the number of staff who have joined active service in the preceding 12 months. This information can be found in the file NHS HCHS Workforce Statistics, Turnover – data tables, at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-workforce-statistics/february-2026

Joiners are defined as any member of staff who was not active in the workforce 12 months previously who is present in the latest workforce data, hence joiners may include staff who are returning from longer periods of unpaid leave as well as those newly recruited, who may have been working in other health and social care settings previously.