Liz Kendall – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liz Kendall on 2014-06-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much NHS trusts (a) planned to spend and (b) spent on agency and contract staff in 2013-14.
Dr Daniel Poulter
As part of the response to the issues in Mid-Staffordshire hospital, and following the recommendations of the Francis report, many trusts have increased agency spend in the short-term to protect patients and improve patient care. Over the longer term, a key objective for the NHS is to keep agency spend to a minimum, an increase in the number of permanent front-line staff is vital to both improving patient care and delivering value for money. The number of frontline clinical staff has increased by more than 16,300 since 2010.
In 2013-14, NHS foundation trusts planned to spend £523 million on agency and contract staff and spent £1,373.0 million. NHS trusts spent £1,209.1 million, how much they planned to spend is not available.
Sources: for NHS trusts – unaudited data in NHS trust summarisation schedules; for NHS foundation trusts – quarterly monitoring information.
Plans are in place in Better Procurement to reduce by £450 million spend on agency and contract staff by the end of 2016.
NHS Trusts spent £1,209.1 million on agency and contract staff n 2013/14.
Source: Unaudited data in NHS Trust Summarisation Schedules.
Amounts for 2009-10 to 2012-13 were not separately identified from other non-permanent staff.
Spend by NHS Foundation Trusts on agency and contract staff is in the following table.
|
Year |
£ million |
|
2009/10 |
764.1 |
|
2010/11 |
854.7 |
|
2011/12 |
907.0 |
|
2012/13 |
1,101.0 |
|
2013/14 |
1,373.0 |
Notes: For 2009/10 – 2012/13 actual figures are based on gross staff costs as per notes in the NHS FT consolidated accounts. The figures from the consolidated accounts may differ to the Board reports due to adjustments made on redundancy, early retirement, capitalisation of staff costs and costs of R&D staff. 2013/14 figures are from quarterly monitoring information.
Information available about spend on all staff is set out in the tables below.
NHS Trusts
|
Year |
£ million |
|
2009/10 |
18,225.1 |
|
2010/11 |
18,929.5 |
|
2011/12 |
19,839.5 |
|
2012/13 |
19,344.7 |
Source: NHS (England) Summarised Accounts 2009/10, 2010/11; NHS Trust Audited Summarisation Schedules 2011/12, 2012/13.
Note: Total staff costs for 2013/14 are not yet available.
NHS Foundation Trusts
|
Year |
£ million |
|
2009/10 |
17,599.7 |
|
2010/11 |
19,442.9 |
|
2011/12 |
23,046.0 |
|
2012/13 |
24,709.0 |
|
2013/14 |
26,246.0 |
Notes: For 2009/10 – 2012/13 actual figures are based on gross staff costs as per notes in the NHS FT consolidated accounts. The figures from the consolidated accounts may differ to the Board reports due to adjustments made on redundancy, early retirement, capitalisation of staff costs and costs of R&D staff. 2013/14 figures are from quarterly monitoring information.
