Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his policy is on reducing the cost to the NHS of temporary staffing.

On 2 June 2015, my Rt. Hon. friend the Secretary of State announced a series of measures to reduce the cost to the National Health Service of agency spend. These measures were rolled out on 1 September 2015 and include:

- the setting of an annual ceiling for total nursing agency spend for each NHS trust for October 2015 to March 2016, and 2016/17 to 2018/19;

- mandatory use of approved frameworks for procuring agency staff; and

- a price cap will be set for nursing agency staff and will be implemented later this year, with rules on spending on other clinical and management staff to follow.