Agency worker bills widen NHS deficit

THE NHS deficit could reach more than £2.8 billion, largely fuelled by spending on agency doctors and nurses, new forecasts show.

Health officials have repeatedly pledged to clamp down on spending on temporary workers, but are struggling to do so.

The new figures show that in the first three-quarters of the financial year, £2.7 billion was spent on agency staff – £1 billion more than intended. Minis- ters have tried to introduce caps on spending, but 20,000 shifts a week are still being filled at rates that exceed the maximum pay limit.

The deficit stands at £2.2 billion, which is already three times the deficit racked up last year, and is close to the £2.8 billion forecast deficit for the year-end.

The figures raise the prospect that the Department of Health could be forced to seek a bailout from the Treasury, which would be a serious breach of Whitehall protocol. A best-case sce- nario would be a year-end deficit of £2.4 billion, the report from regulators says.

The NHS has also missed swathes of performance targets.

For the first time, a national target to treat 92 per cent of patients within 18 weeks of referral has been missed, the figures for the third quarter of 2015-16 show.

In Accident and Emergency, just 90.66 per cent of patients were seen within four hours, against a target of 95 per cent.