Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the NHS takes to help ensure that the bank staff they employ are not simultaneously in receipt of (a) their NHS salary while reporting to be off sick and (b) pay for working on the bank at another hospital.

NHS England’s data to 6 October 2021 shows there was an average of 74,863 sickness absences in National Health Service trusts per day, of which 15,546 staff were absent for COVID-19 related reasons, including the need to self-isolate. Data is not held centrally on the number of those staff who were simultaneously working for a bank. NHS trusts address any such fraud at a local level through their disciplinary processes.