NHS trusts are paying as much as £5,200 a shift for agency doctors, figures uncovered by Labour have shown, with the party saying that low staffing levels resulted in a significant rise in the use of temporary workers last year.
In what Labour called an indication of a “desperate” staffing crisis in the health service, freedom of information requests to every English NHS trust showed they paid £3bn to agencies for staff during 2021-22, 20% more than in the previous year.
In addition, trusts spent £6bn on so-called bank staff – NHS professionals paid to carry out temporary shifts, including employees looking for extra work.
In response to a question on the most they had paid that year for a single doctor’s shift, one in three trusts said this was more than £3,000, and three-quarters paid over £2,000.
The overall most expensive shift, at the Northern Care Alliance NHS foundation trust in Greater Manchester, cost £5,234. The same trust spent the most overall on agency doctors: £21m last year.
One of Labour’s big pushes for its NHS strategy would be to recruit more permanent staff, including a doubling of medical school places to 15,000 a year.
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said it was “infuriating that while taxpayers are paying over the odds on agency doctors the government has cut medical school places”.
Separately, Streeting has become engaged in a bitter war of words with the British Medical Association (BMA) after saying the doctors’ union would need to become more accepting of change if a Labour government was to provide more resources to the NHS.
The BMA criticised Streeting for what it called “disappointing” comments after he used an interview to accuse the union of being hostile towards vitally needed NHS reform efforts.
Streeting had told the Sunday Telegraph: “Given that we have committed to more staff, I cannot for the life of me understand why the BMA is so hostile to the idea that with more staff must come better standards for patients.
“Whenever I point out the appalling state of access to primary care, where currently a record 2 million people are waiting more than a month to see a GP, I am treated like some sort of heretic by the BMA – who seem to think any criticism of patient access to primary care is somehow an attack on GPs.”
In the interview, Streeting highlighted what he called a “something-for-nothing culture in the NHS” and accused the BMA of being out of touch.
A vote last month by GPs in England to cut surgeries’ core opening hours to 9am to 5pm made doctors “look like they’re living on a different planet and, worst of all, aren’t really thinking about the best interests of patients”, Streeting said.
Dr Emma Runswick, deputy chair of council at the BMA, said the comments were “incredibly disappointing”.
She said: “The anger for that crisis should be directed squarely at the government and their failure to invest, not at those who work in the NHS or the unions who represent them.
“It wasn’t so long ago that Mr Streeting and the Labour party were clapping healthcare workers for their contributions during the pandemic, so to hear them now accusing staff of a ‘something for nothing’ culture and potentially supporting further real-terms pay cuts will leave many staff extremely concerned.”
The BMA did accept “that a strong workforce goes hand in hand with patient standards and that investment in the workforce is the only way to improve our NHS”, Runswick added.
“We very much hope Mr Streeting will focus his attention on challenging this government on ensuring that they will offer strong support to the doctors, nurses and other NHS workers who are now suffering unprecedented levels of exhaustion and burnout,” she said.
Asked about the comments on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday show, Streeting said: “I was just responding in that interview with the Telegraph to criticism they levelled at me.”
He went on: “I do understand the pressure that doctors are under – they do a very difficult job against a very difficult backdrop – but what I’m saying is, if we’re putting investment into the NHS, as the next Labour government will, we have got to expect better results for patients, and ultimately, it’s my job to be the patients’ champion.”
