Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the cost to the (a) NHS and (b) social care system of (i) fees, (ii) markups and (ii) commissions to supply agencies for (A) clinical and (B) other staff.

In 2018/19, National Health Service trusts spent £2.40 billion on agency staff, including clinical and non-clinical staff. Between March 2018 and March 2019, £938 million was spent on agency medical staff, £950 million on agency nursing staff and £513 million on other staff.¹

NHS Improvement’s agency rules include a cap which sets a ceiling for agency fees. Full details of the NHS Improvement price caps are attached.

The Department does not hold data that shows the breakdown of fees, markups and commissions.

The Department does not hold this data for social care. The Skills for Care programme estimates that in 2018/19 agency social care staff represented 7% of the 1.52 million people strong adult social care workforce.²

Notes:

[1]https://improvement.nhs.uk/documents/5404/Performance_of_the_NHS_provider_sector_for_the_quarter_4_1819.pdf

²https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/adult-social-care-workforce-data/Workforce-intelligence/documents/State-of-the-adult-social-care-sector/State-of-Report-2019.pdf