Government statement on use of agency workers a ‘revision of a failed tactic’ – REC

Responding to today’s statement by the Department of Health and Social Care on agency spend, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) Chief Executive Neil Carberry said:

“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. Despite this, the Department of Health continually insists that the NHS is unlike any other employer when it comes to the impact of agency workers. It 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 bank costs higher than agency, and punished those agencies who signed up to cost controls at the expense of those that didn’t in the name of this crusade. Today’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.

“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.”

Notes to editors

According to the 2024 NHS Staff Survey, around one in three staff report witnessing errors, near misses, or incidents that could have harmed patients, staff, or service users in the past month — a figure consistent with 2022 and 2023. Alarmingly, nearly half of registered nurses and midwives reported seeing such incidents in the NHS Survey 2024.

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