Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to (a) recruit and retain more permanent staff in the NHS and (b) reduce NHS reliance on agency staff.

This Government is committed to growing the National Health Service workforce. We have record numbers of staff working in the NHS, including almost 4,700 more doctors and over 10,500 more nurses since last year. We are on track to meet the 50,000 nurses manifesto commitment and we have also funded 1,500 more medical school places each year to strengthen our workforce.

We also recognise the importance of retaining our experienced workforce. The NHS Retention Programme is helping to retain our experienced workforce through targeted interventions to support staff to stay, whilst keeping them well. The long term workforce plan currently being developed by NHS England will help ensure we have the right staff numbers with the right skills to deliver high quality services in the future.

A flexible workforce is important for running the NHS, to meet short term demand increases. This is done through staff banks and external agencies. Our policy is to reduce the use of agency spend and prioritise staff banks. Since 2015, we have controlled agency spend through price caps and procurement frameworks and have reduced agency spend by a third from £3.6 billion in 2015/16 to £2.4 billion in 2020/21

Alongside agency specific measures, the Government has worked with NHS trusts to develop their staff banks, including collaborative banks, which create a larger pool of flexible staff.