§ Mr. Harry GreenwayTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the average number of beds in use in national health service hospitals in January and February; and what was the average number of medical nursing and auxiliary staff employed to care for the patients using them.
§ Mr. DorrellData is not available yet for January and February. The latest centrally-available figures are as follows:
Beds Average daily available beds in NHS hospitals in England during April 1988–March 1989 282,937 Source: KH03
NHS hospital staff at 30 September 1988 Whole time equivalent1 Medical and dental (includes locums)2 40,600 Nursing and midwifery staff3 344,800 Auxiliary staff4 79,800 1 All figures are rounded to the nearest hundred whole-time equivalent. 2 The figure is for all hospital medical and dental staff. 3 Includes agency staff. Excludes nurses and midwives working in out-patients or accident and emergency departments. 4 Defined as professional and technical staff. Note: For medical and dental, and professional and technical staff it is not possible to separate the services they provide to in-patients from those for others, eg, out-patients.
Source: DH annual census of NHS medical and non-medical manpower.