Hospitals in England have paid up to £5,200 for a single shift by an agency doctor, amid growing pressure on the NHS.
The most expensive shift was £5,234, according to figures obtained by Labour through Freedom of Information requests to NHS trusts across the country.
The party said that was paid by a trust in the north of England.
Labour argued its investigation shows the extent of the staffing crisis facing English hospitals.
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It shared figures showing that the NHS has been forced to spend billions of pounds on doctors and nurses, provided by agencies, due to workforce shortages.
One in three NHS trusts paid an agency more than £3,000 for a single doctor’s shift last year, while three quarters paid more than £2,000, the party said.
It said “desperate hospitals” had no other choice and blamed the Conservatives, saying they had failed to train enough doctors and nurses.
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Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, said: “Desperate hospitals are forced to pay rip-off fees to agencies, because the Conservatives have failed to train enough doctors and nurses over the past 12 years.
“It is infuriating that, while taxpayers are paying over the odds on agency doctors, the government has cut medical school places, turning away thousands of straight-A students in England.”
The party has pledged to tackle NHS staff shortages by doubling the number of medical school places to train 15,000 doctors a year and training 10,000 new nurses and midwives every year, with plans also to double the number of qualifying district nurses.
Earlier this year, MPs warned of “the greatest workforce crisis” in the history of the NHS was putting patients and staff at “serious risk”.
Put together by MPs from the cross-party Health and Social Care Committee, the report pulled no punches when addressing the government over the growing crisis.
They said there was a shortage of 12,000 hospital doctors, and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives – and that the government had “no credible plan” for making the situation any better.
Projections have suggested an extra 475,000 jobs will be needed in health and an extra 490,000 jobs in social care by the early part of the next decade in order to ease the strain.
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A Conservative source told Sky News: “We have recruited record numbers of doctors and nurses to support our NHS – with almost 4,000 more doctors and over 9,000 more nurses compared to September 2021.
“Labour cannot be trusted to support our NHS – they have no plan to grip inflation, resolve strikes or boost the workforce. Instead, they waste time playing political games and defending their union paymasters.”
