The National Health Service has been forced to defend itself from allegations by a House of Commons Select Committee that a “disastrous failure” in planning resulted in a massive over-recruitment of staff.

Between 1999 and 2004, the number of nurses employed by the NHS in England increased by more than 67,000 - more then three times the 20,000 figure the Department of Health had intended. Over the same period the number of GPs grew by 4,098, double the planned number.

In its report on workforce planning, Boom and Bust in the NHS, the committee said: "It was too easy to throw new staff into the task of meeting targets rather than consider the most cost-effective way of doing the job. Large pay increases were granted without adequate steps being taken to ensure increases in productivity in return." Increases in the NHS budget were seen as "a blank cheque for recruiting new staff". This caused the NHS to lurch "from boom to bust".

Hospitals and trusts plunged into deficit as a result of paying for the extra staff, said the Committee. Now posts are being left empty or lost, and a few NHS workers are being made compulsorily redundant. More than half of newly qualified physiotherapists have failed to find work in the NHS.

Sian Thomas, deputy director of NHS Employers, said the recommendations in the report were “no surprise”. She added: “The NHS is working hard to improve workforce planning and employers are already acting on many of the committee’s suggestions. Workforce planning has always been a huge challenge in healthcare.  It isn’t an exact science and the time it takes to train a healthcare professional means that the way services are provided may have changed in the meantime.

 “We have seen a significant increase in numbers of staff in recent years and those increases were long overdue.  As little as five years ago we were facing severe shortages across the professions which were threatening services to patients. Supply of staff and demand for staff are now much closely aligned and we now need a period of stability.”