Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust Spent £13.1m on Agency Doctors and Nurses in 2021

As nurses across England again go on strike today, only the fourth strike day in the history of the Royal College of Nursing, I thought it worth considering the financial cost of the Government refusing to make a deal. While increasing pay comes at a cost to the Treasury, failing to increase pay also comes at considerable cost, with the NHS unable to recruit and retain permanent members of staff and in the process relying heavily agency staff.

When it comes to Surrey and Sussex Healthcare, a freedom of information request has revealed that our area alone shelled out £13.1m on doctors and nurses from private agencies to plug gaps in its workforce in 2021.

Agency staff are brought in to cover when there aren’t enough staff on shift, at a far higher cost than those who work full time for the NHS. Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust spent as much as £1,797 on a single doctor’s shift last year, meaning money that could have been spent elsewhere instead went towards inflated agency fees.

In total the NHS has spent £4.6 billion on agency doctors in the last five years. This year it paid £3 billion to agencies who provide doctors and nurses at short notice, a 20% increase compared with last year. Trusts spent a further £6 billion on bank staff, when NHS staff are paid to do temporary shifts, taking the total spent on additional staff to around £9.2 billion.

The NHS currently has 9,000 vacancies for doctors, with a record 133,000 vacancies in total. Despite the shortages, the Conservative government this summer cut medical school places by 3,000, meaning thousands more students who want to help are being turned away.

Labour will tackle staff shortages in the NHS to save taxpayers’ money being wasted on agency recruiters and treat patients on time again by:

• Doubling the number of medical school places to train 15,000 doctors a year
• Training 10,000 new nurses and midwives every year
• Doubling 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.