The REC’s CEO Neil Carberry hit back at demands from the Department of Health and Social Care this week for the elimination of NHS agency spend, condemning the action as “another revision of a failed tactic” and “scapegoating”.

In a letter this week to NHS trusts and integrated care boards (ICBs), government health leaders termed recruitment agencies providing temporary workers as “rip-off” and threatened to “consider” legislation to force NHS bodies to cut agency spend beyond the £1bn saved in the last year.

Carberry argued: “[The NHS] has been cutting spend for years – but never solved the problem, because agency work isn’t the problem. Officials have built a system that has raised [staff] bank costs higher than agency and punished those agencies who signed up to cost controls at the expense of those who didn’t in the name of this crusade.”

He went on to say: “[This week’s statement] is just another revision of a failed tactic – and you can tell that by the way that the department refuses to even discuss the issue of agency cost with agencies themselves. They are afraid of the truth.”

Financial experts with inside knowledge of the recruitment industry have previously noted the dramatic effects of the NHS’s already lessened agency spend on recruitment consultancies serving the healthcare sector, with business activity dropping perilously. 

“Employers globally use agency staff to effectively manage employment costs and varying demand as an addition to their core substantive employees. Agencies help save money and improve service, while offering skilled professionals the working lives they want,” Carberry said.

“Today’s scapegoating statement from the government will rightly alarm the public about the impact of rushed cost-cutting on safe staffing. It also further unsettles agency workers – a vital, flexible workforce who are often taken for granted, but without whom the NHS would struggle to operate.

“The NHS needs a balanced workforce strategy. That means combining long-term investment in training and retention with a flexible approach to meeting immediate pressure and treating agencies as partners rather than as peripheral players to be blamed. We’re ready to work with the government to achieve its aims – but that has to start with an end to the name-calling,” Carberry concluded.

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