Health secretary accuses agencies of ‘ripping off’ NHS

Nick Elvin

Recruitment industry bodies have criticised comments made by health secretary Jeremy Hunt that staffing agencies are “ripping off” the NHS.

Mr Hunt said this week that the NHS had to make “substantial and significant efficiency savings”, and the Government therefore plans to introduce a new package of financial controls, including capping rates for temporary agency staff.

“We will wrest the initiative away from expensive staffing agencies that have been ripping off our hospitals with exorbitant rates, and require hospitals to use nationally negotiated frameworks that make use of the NHS’s collective bargaining power,” Mr Hunt said.

“We know from our tough new inspection regime that the best care is given by regular nurses in stable teams so it is time to wean the NHS off an understandable but growing addiction to temporary staffing that happened in the wake of Mid Staffs.”

Mr Hunt’s announcement follows comments made by Simon Stevens, CEO of NHS England, on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, that NHS hospitals overspent by about £1.8 billion on temporary staff during the last year. He said the NHS should tackle this by offering flexible employment for nurses who are currently working through temp agencies, and clamping down on agencies that are “ripping off” the health service.

Responding to the health secretary’s comments, Tom Hadley, director of policy at the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, said: “The language and tone from Jeremy Hunt is outrageous. Agency nurses play a vital role in ensuring safe staffing ratios and quality patient care in an NHS that cannot find sufficient permanent staff. He is scapegoating agencies for the NHS’s own mismanagement of workforce planning.

“Nobody objects to there being set parameters for pricing of agency staff, but they already exist in the form of NHS framework agreements. We just don’t see how it is feasible to bring in new rules at this short notice.

“We are disappointed that the Department of Health has not consulted around the introduction of these new rules and await more detail about exactly how they propose to reconcile them with NHS trusts’ legal responsibility to ensure safe staffing levels on wards.

“What happens, for instance, if there is a cold snap and a trust needs staff instantly to manage an influx of demand but they have already reached their newly imposed cap on overall spend?”

Adrian Marlowe, chairman of the Association of Recruitment Consultancies, said Mr Hunt’s comments “demonstrated the Government’s resolve to address overspending in the NHS”, but were not fair.

“If you read between the lines it is clear that Mr Hunt recognises the use of supply agencies to support the NHS. He wants to cap rates and limit, but not ban, the use of agencies. So the criticism is directed at the rates charged by some, and perceived over reliance on agencies. That’s why the focus now should be on why plainly exorbitant rates are being charged, and why the NHS uses agencies at all.”

Mr Marlowe said the rates were governed by supply and demand, with managers of NHS Trusts needing to take on staff to meet targets, and temporary staff being in a position to bargain for rates that reflect work pressure due to those targets.

“The ‘piggies in the middle’ are the recruitment agencies who are engaged by the NHS to find staff often at very short notice,” he said. “We now are told that trusts have been agreeing very high, indeed shocking, rates but it is entirely wrong to suggest that this is the fault of the agencies.

“Given that rates charged are driven by market forces working on the minds of temporary staff, and supply and demand, surely the Government is right now to restrict rates the NHS is allowed to pay by law. Logically if temporary staff cannot by law earn higher rates they would not be in a position to find work at those rates.”