NHS spending on agency staff reflects a failure of workforce planning
SIR – The scandalous inflated rates that NHS hospitals are paying for agency doctors (report, December 12) reflect the significant and long-standing under-provision of staff.
Such imbursement must tempt some medical staff to retire early and take advantage of more flexible work and better incomes.
Should not the Government intervene with stricter caps on rates for locum staff and agencies, to prevent further millions of pounds being leached out of our fractured NHS? Michael KH Crumplin FRCS Wrexham, Denbighshire
SIR – The Government’s response to pay claims from NHS staff is that raises are offered in line with the conclusions of the independent pay review bodies.
I have worked in the NHS for 39 years and have lost count of the number of times the government of the day did not implement recommendations from these bodies in full because of the economic circumstances. If recommendations had been honoured in the past, perhaps we wouldn’t be where we are today, with staff feeling undervalued. Dr Mike Copp
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
SIR – As a former GP, I found visiting a hospital A&E department with a sick friend on Saturday night to be a depressing and shameful experience.
There was a fleet of ambulances queuing up outside, unable to discharge patients; the waiting room was heaving, including with little babies and the elderly, and there was a four-hour wait to be seen.
Since Covid, it has become clear that GPS are playing a diminishing role in the NHS, many using it as an excuse to avoid seeing patients altogether. Many of the tasks that they now perform could equally be performed by a specialist nursing team. This would free up hundreds of millions of pounds to go where they are really needed – to hospitals. Meanwhile the problem of bed-blocking could be solved by requisitioning hotels for the use of convalescents.
Andrew Norman
Poole, Dorset
SIR – Congratulations to Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary (Interview, December 11), for actually starting a conversation about the shambles that is our health service. The sad fact that he is himself stuck on a waiting list says it all.
Mike Metcalfe
Butleigh, Somerset
SIR – Whenever the Conservatives have tried to make changes to the health service, the Labour Party has shouted that the Tories are going to privatise “our NHS”.
Now, at long last, Labour “vows war on the health unions”. Does this mean we can actually have a sensible discussion about this and finally do something about the money pit that the NHS has become?
Ann Wright Cambridge