The news comes as the number of vacancies in the profession soar.
New data released by NHS England reveals the NHS is being forced to pay private firms nearly £1 billion per year.
According to information shared by Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting, the government has forked out a massive £4.3 billion on agency nursing staff in just the last five years.
In a tweet, Mr Streeting said, “taxpayers are paying the price for the Conservatives’ failure to train enough nurses over the past 12 years”.
The news comes as the number of vacancies in the profession soar, hitting a recording-breaking 47,000 unfilled posts across the NHS in England earlier this year.
ABCD.
Notably, any plan to address the current nursing workforce shortage have been absent from announcements by the new Health Secretary, Thérèse Coffey.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The Health and Social Care Secretary is focused on delivering for patients and will do this by focusing on her ABCD priorities – ambulances, backlogs, care, doctors and dentists – all of which will be drive by a bolstered NHS workforce.
“There are over 29,000 more nurses working in the NHS now compared with September 2019, and NHS spending on agency staff has dropped by a third since 2015/16.
“We have also commissioned NHS England to develop a long term workforce plan to help recruit and retain more NHS staff.”
