Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of (a) removing locum caps and (b) ringfencing a new budget for NHS locum staff.

In 2015, the Government introduced measures to reduce National Health Service spending on agency staff, including price caps, procurement frameworks and expenditure ceilings. These have contributed to a decrease in expenditure from £3.6 billion in 2015/16 to £2.4 billion in 2020/21. Removing such caps is therefore likely to increase the cost of temporary staffing and is not supported.

We are urging a reduction in the use of agency staff and prioritising the use of in-house staff banks, as this ensures value for money for the healthcare system. However, this includes a provision to allow trusts to override rules on agency staffing on exceptional patient safety grounds. Trust boards have primary responsibility for monitoring the local impact of the agency rules and ensuring patient safety.

While no specific assessment of ringfencing a new budget for NHS locum staff has been made, up to £120,000 per integrated care system or sustainability and transformation partnership has been made available in general practice for flexible pools to aid the process of recruiting and deploying general practitioners (GPs). GPs supported through the pool arrangement could have access to the flexibility of a locuming role, with the additional benefits of a salaried position. Locum caps on pay rates, used in secondary care, do not extend to primary care.