In 2015 the government introduced a cap on NHS trusts' spending on agency staff, but the figures show that for many trusts some costs continue to rise. The 25m spent on agency midwives represented a 40 increase over four years.
'Over-reliance' The report also said that on average agency midwives were paid 41 an hour, about half of which went to the agency. Additionally, overtime pay for NHS midwives cost an average of 23 per hour, while bank staff in-house workers who want to work flexibly across health trusts - cost 25.63 per hour on average. Jon Skewes, from the RCM, said spending on this scale "simply cannot continue. He went on: "An over-reliance on temporary staff is clearly more expensive than employing the correct number of permanent staff and needs to be corrected sooner rather than later." But a spokesman from NHS Improvement - which combines a number of health monitoring and improvement bodies - said trusts "have made good progress" and saved over 600m on agency staff since last year. "We are committed to helping the NHS cut the cost of agency midwives and all agency staff, so that patients get the right care, from the right staff, at the right time," he added. The overall budget for NHS England in 2015-16 year was 101.3bn.
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