Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many agency staff have been assigned to the NHS and social care services in England in each year for which data is available; and what the cost to the public purse of such staff has been in each such year.

Total agency spending in the National Health Service is available for the years 2013/14 to 2015/16

Data for the number of agency staff is not collected centrally; trusts publish individual accounts, which are publicly available.

In a drive to increase transparency and performance, NHS Improvement is to begin publishing agency performance league tables in the coming weeks. NHS Improvement has written to trusts asking them to publish information about their 20 highest earning agency staff, and any agency staff who have been in post longer than six months.