Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what meetings he has had in the last 12 months with representatives from the British Medical Association, the General Medical Council and the Royal College of Nursing on reducing the need for temporary and agency staff in NHS England.

My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State meets regularly with external partners, including the British Medical Association, the General Medical Council and the Royal College of Nursing to discuss a range of issues affecting the National Health Service, including reducing spending on temporary and agency staff in the NHS. The Secretary of State introduced a series of radical measures to bring spiralling agency spending back under control in 2015, including price caps limiting the amount a trust can pay to an agency for temporary staff. The measures have had a significant impact, trusts are using the price caps to negotiate lower rates and secure a better deal for taxpayers. The NHS spent £300 million less on agency staff than it was projected to in 2015/16 with further savings forecast for the current financial year.