Mr. Meacherasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many (a) doctors and (b) nurses have been made redundant in each of the last 10 years.
§ Mr. Kenneth ClarkeInformation on numbers of redundancies has not been held centrally since 31 March 1981, when the claiming of redundancy rebates from Department of Employment was devolved to health authorities. For the years 1975–76 to 1978–79 the numbers of doctors and nurses can be identified from the total numbers but, for the later years, only total numbers of redundancies are available. No information is available in respect of years earlier than 1975–76.
The figures available are:
Number of redundancies of Year Doctors Nurses all NHS staff 1975–76 Nil 16 122 1976–77 Nil 23 68 1977–78 Nil 68 247 1978–79 7 40 234 1979–80 N/A N/A 340 1980–81 N/A N/A 335