Health Services: West Midlands
(asked on 10th March 2017) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of public sector pay restraints on levels of expenditure by the NHS on agency staff in (a) Coventry and (b) the West Midlands.
The independent NHS Pay Review Bodies, in place for decades, are relied on by Government and other stakeholders to consider all the written and oral evidence they receive and to make recommendations on the level of pay award that will enable the National Health Service to continue to recruit, retain and motivate the staff it needs. Both Pay Review Bodies received evidence on agency spend in 2016/17.
The NHS Pay Review Bodies recommended a 1% pay award for 2016/17 which the Government accepted in full.
My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State introduced a series of radical measures to bring 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 are working; as of Quarter 3, 2016-17 the NHS had spent £1 billion less on agency staff than it was projected to had we not taken tough action to bring in controls on agency spending, with further savings forecast for the current financial year.
Data on agency spending is not currently collected by city or standard regions, but acute trusts in the Coventry and West Midlands fall under the NHS England Midlands and East region. An up-to-date list of these trusts is available at:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/mids-east/ccg-trust/
The latest national list of best and worst performers on agency spending is available at:
Three of the best performing Trusts are from the West Midlands – West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust and Birmingham Childrens Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
Both Pay Review Bodies received evidence on agency spend for this year’s pay round – 2017/18.
The Government has now received the NHS Pay Review Bodies reports for 2017/18 which it will consider very carefully. An announcement will be made in due course.