Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate his Department has made of the number of (a) trusts that have breached the national price caps for NHS agency staff and (b) times those price caps have been breached since their introduction.

Information on temporary staff fill rates is not collected centrally.

NHS Improvement has calculated that since the introduction of the price caps, agency spending by National Health Service trusts and NHS foundation trusts has fallen from £303 million in October 2015 to £287 million in February 2016.

Monitor has previously released information on the number of trusts reporting using shifts in excess of the price caps from 23 November to 28 December 2015. This can be accessed here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/497353/FOI_agency_staff_payments.pdf