Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to intervene in the agency market of social care recruitment to (a) prevent money going out of the system to recruitment agencies and (b) support with staffing levels in that sector.

Most care workers are employed by private sector providers who make their own recruitment decisions, independent of central government. It is, therefore, the responsibility of individual providers to make decisions on the use of recruitment agencies to support with capacity.

To support the sector with workforce capacity, we are supporting recruitment at home and at abroad - investing £15 million to boost the international recruitment of care workers and launching our domestic National Recruitment Campaign in early November.