Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much the NHS has spent on overseas recruitment exercises in each of the last five years for which data is available.

Local National Health Service organisations are best placed to decide how many staff they employ and how best to recruit those staff to meet services tailored to the needs of their patients and local communities, to deliver safe care. Information on the costs that NHS trusts may have incurred when seeking to employ staff either within the United Kingdom or overseas is not collected by the Department.