Health and Social Care
In March, NHS England and Improvement (NHSE/I) published the delayed price card for agency workers 2022-23. This did not reflect the pay increase given to NHS substantive staff and reduced agency fees by the rate of the National Insurance (NI) increase. The REC understands the frustration and confusion this has caused for businesses, so we have written to Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
In the letter, we set out that the department urgently needs to carry out a fundamental review into frameworks and price caps, which currently don’t serve the original objective of better controlling agency spend and getting value for taxpayers’ money. Instead, they are only pushing NHS Trusts to use more off-framework agency workers and use other models for staffing, driving costs up. The latest price card from NHSE/I, is likely to make this worse. Agencies are having to operate on even thinner margins than they already were. In the midst of staff shortages and the cost-of-living crisis, the continued use of the agency rate cards will benefit no one and hit the pockets of hard-working staff in the NHS.
The impact on SMEs is even more severe, putting them at serious financial risk. This is out of line with the government’s ambition to include more SMEs in public procurement. In addition, this is likely to reduce the overall market size for supplying staff into the NHS when staff shortages and NHS backlogs are already at crisis point.
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