The Great Western NHS Trust has shelled out as much as £2,549 for a single agency nurse in order to fill staffing holes, it has been revealed.
One in three NHS trusts paid an agency more than £1,000 for a single shift last year, while one in every six trusts paid more than £2,000, results from freedom of information requests reveal.
Out of 60 trusts, 10 reported the priciest shift cost of over £2,000, while for another 13 it was between £1,000 and £2,000, data from Labour shows with Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust the most expensive agency shift reported at £2,549.
Government caps introduced in 2015 were meant to see agency pay rates no more than 55 per cent above what a normal employee would receive however the latest date shows that nearly nine in 10 agency shifts for doctors and dentists and four in 10 for nurses saw pay-rate caps exceeded in 2021.
The NHS currently has a record 47,000 nursing vacancies, with 132,000 vacancies in total. Despite being short of more than 10,000 doctors, the Conservative government this summer cut medical school places by 30%, meaning more students who want to help are being turned away.
Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for South Swindon, Heidi Alexander has urged the government to ‘get a grip’ of the recruitment agencies that are ‘making a killing’ out of the nursing crisis saying: “Government need to get a grip of the agencies that are making a killing out of this crisis and they need to adopt Labour’s fully costed and funded proposals to train the staff the NHS needs.
“Having visited the Great Western Hospital recently, I know how hard everyone is working and how much pressure the hospital is under. It’s not staff’s fault or management’s fault that we’re in this situation. Responsibility lies squarely with Government.
“Over the last 12 years, the Conservatives simply haven’t trained the nurses and medical staff we need. Our local MP, Robert Buckland voted to axe bursaries for student nurses six years ago and our hospital is now having to fork out huge sums of money to get agency workers in.”
Agreeing with Heidi Alexander’s comments, Wes Streeting, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, said: “Taxpayers are picking up the bill for the Conservatives’ failure to train enough doctors and nurses over the past 12 years. This is infuriating amounts of money paid to agencies, when patients are waiting longer than ever for treatment.
“Labour will tackle this problem at its root. We will train the doctors and nurses the NHS needs, paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status. Our NHS needs doctors and nurses more than the wealthiest need a tax break.”
Labour’s plan to train a new generation of NHS staff will:
- Double the number of medical school places
- Create 10,000 new nursing and midwifery placements each year
- Double the number of district nurses qualifying each year
- Provide 5,000 new health visitors
The plans will be paid for by abolishing non-dom tax status, which allows residents of the UK to avoid paying taxes here.
