£4.3BN AGENCY NURSE FAILURE
Labour vow to tackle staff crisis
PLUGGING the severe lack of NHS nurses with private agency shifts has cost £4.3billion in five years.
Tory failure to recruit enough NHS nurses over 12 years means a fortune from taxpayers ends up private firms’ pockets.
Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “The NHS is losing billions to agencies and patients are left waiting longer than ever before to be seen.”
He found the agency bill was £966.2million in 2016-17 and £837.8million in 2020-21.
NHS data in June showed there were a record 46,828 nursing vacancies. Mr Streeting pledged Labour would launch one of the biggest-ever expansions of NHS staff, including training thousands more nurses every year, paid for by axing the non-dom tax status. Agency nurses are used to fill gaps in NHS rotas due to staff shortages and sickness. But agency nurses are paid about 50% more than NHS counterparts.
Better pay and more flexible work attracts NHS nurses to quit and work for an agency. Pat Cullen, of the Royal College of Nursing which has balloted to strike over pay, said: “Temporary staff have a vital role to play in providing safe care, but they should not be used to offset a shortfall in registered nurses.”
Neil Carberry, of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, said: “The NHS staffing frameworks are not fit for purpose – an unwillingness from Government to pay nurses and doctors what they’re worth has led to more and more shifts being rejected, and more high-cost, last-minute shifts needed.”
A Department of Health spokesman said: “There are over 29,000 more nurses working in the NHS now compared with September 2019, and NHS spending on agency staff has dropped by a third since 2015/16.