Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what proportion of hospital shifts breaching the national price caps for NHS agency staff occurred on patient safety grounds in the last year for which figures are available.

Last year the Government introduced a series of tough financial controls to help the National Health Service tackle overspending on agency staff, including an hourly price cap. These controls include a provision for any trusts that need to override the price caps on exceptional patient safety grounds. Trusts report any such overrides on a weekly basis to NHS Improvement.

The latest information released by NHS Improvement on the number of trusts reporting using shifts in excess of the price caps from 23 November 2015 to 7 March 2016 is available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/foi-agency-shifts-exceeding-the-price-caps-by-trust