Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of how much the NHS spends on agency and contract staff.

National Health Service spend on agency and contract staff for 2013/14 is £3.34 billion[1].

Following the Francis[2] report many trusts increased their spend on temporary staffing to meet safe staffing levels. The Department expects trusts to have a strong grip on their finances, and manage their contract and agency staffing spend (including use of locums) responsibly through effective and efficient workforce planning and management and to minimise temporary staffing costs in future years.

The Government is clear that the current rate of spending is not supporting the best positive outcome for patients. The Secretary of State has announced a comprehensive package of measures to address the problem including:

- setting a maximum hourly rate for doctors and nurses;

- banning the use of agencies that are not approved;

- putting a cap on total agency staff spending for each NHS trust in financial difficulty; and

- requiring specific approval for any expensive consultancy contracts over £50,000.

[1] The 2014/15 figures reflect data collected from NHS trusts and foundation trusts as part of the Q4 data collection which is unpublished and unaudited. Whilst this data would not ordinarily be provided as part of a Parliamentary Question contribution, it has been included within this response as both Monitor and NHS Trust Development Authority have separately released data relating to temporary agency staff spend. It should be noted that their figures vary slightly from those included above. These figures may also be subject to revision as part of the 2014/15 final audited accounts production, and should therefore not be used once the final published Department of Health Annual Report and Accounts.

[2] http://www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com/