NHS: Temporary Employment
(asked on 29th November 2017) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what proportion of the funding allocated to the NHS has been spent on agency staff in each of the last 7 years.
Total figures for agency expenditure are available for National Health Service secondary care in England for each year from 2013-14 to 2016-17 but not before. We do not hold figures for agency expenditure in primary care.
The following table shows NHS secondary care agency expenditure figures:
Year | NHS England mandate (£ billion) | Total NHS secondary care expenditure on agency staff in England (£ billion) | Agency spend as % of mandate |
2013-14 | 94.731 | 2.589 | 2.73 |
2014-15 | 97.342 | 3.189 | 3.28 |
2015-16 | 100.500 | 3.632 | 3.61 |
2016-17 | 105.962 | 2.935 | 2.77 |
A number of measures have been introduced by the Secretary of State to bring secondary care agency spending under control including price caps, procurement frameworks and expenditure ceilings. These have contributed to the NHS spending around £700 million less on agency in 2016/17 than in the previous financial year.