Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 6 October 2022 to Question 48429 on Nurses: Temporary Employment, how much NHS England spent on agency nurses in the 2021-22 financial year.

Agency spend on nurses for 2021/22 is not yet available. While the NHS Consolidated Accounts have been published, this does not include an explicit figure for agency spend as it is bundled together with other spend items. We expect the agency data for 2021/22 to be published this spring.