Agency Nurses

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The number of those nurses has fallen—as have the numbers in mental health, which is worth pointing out—and we are trying to address this. I think I made a slip of the tongue a moment ago when I said that £5,000 more will be spent each year on training nurses; I meant that there will be 5,000 more student nursing places.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Question further teases out the sometimes expensive inadequacies in workforce planning in our NHS. Under the circumstances of the winter crisis and the 40,000-nurse shortfall, clearly trusts have no choice sometimes but to take on agency staff in specialist and other services—and this is expensive. Does the Minister expect that the late funding made available for the winter crisis will be spent largely in this way? Will his department penalise trusts for using agency staff in this way?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness is quite right that agency staff are sometimes used to fill vacancies—about nine out of 10 vacancies are filled in that way. The key is to make sure that they are used in a proper, planned way that is not expensive. The point about the “break glass” clause is that the rules that exist to cap agency spend can be broken where there is a need and where that need is approved by the trust for patient safety purposes. That is an important feature of the system.