{"value":{"id":1584841,"askingMemberId":4471,"askingMember":null,"house":"Commons","memberHasInterest":false,"dateTabled":"2023-02-07T00:00:00","dateForAnswer":"2023-02-09T00:00:00","uin":"141463","questionText":"To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the average annual cost to the public purse of NHS agency staff; and if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of pay rates for agency staff on the pay rate of NHS employees.","answeringBodyId":17,"answeringBodyName":"Department of Health and Social Care","isWithdrawn":false,"isNamedDay":false,"groupedQuestions":[],"answerIsHolding":false,"answerIsCorrection":false,"answeringMemberId":4423,"answeringMember":null,"correctingMemberId":null,"correctingMember":null,"dateAnswered":"2023-02-15T00:00:00","answerText":"

In 2016 NHS England introduced price caps for agency shifts, setting out the recommended maximum hourly charge that a trust should pay for agency staff. As a consequence of this and other measures, agency spend remained stable at approximately £2.4 billion per year from 2017/18 to 2020/21.

For National Health Service employees, the Pay Review Body (PRB) process is the established mechanism for determining pay uplifts in the public sector, outside of negotiating multi-year pay and contract reform deals. As the PRBs are independent, we cannot pre-empt their recommendations, and we will carefully consider their reports when we receive them later this year.

As a result of the 2022/23 pay recommendations, over one million NHS staff including nurses, paramedics and midwives have received at least a £1,400 increase.

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