Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 25 November 2014 to Question 214838, if he will make it his policy to identify locum doctors separately within the information collected by his Department on spend on agency and contract staff.

There are no plans to expand data collections to include information on locum doctors employed by agencies. It is important to ensure that the burden of data collection on National Health Service organisations is kept to a minimum, helping them to keep their administrative costs low so they can concentrate on delivering good patient care. It is the responsibility of NHS organisations to have a firm grip on their workforce planning and management including their use of locum doctors.