Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:57 pm on 17 January 2023.

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Photo of Adam Price Adam Price Plaid Cymru 1:57, 17 January 2023

I would urge him to look at that possibility for this financial year as well. One of the other issues that you did bring to the table, which was welcome, was the role of agency staff. Now, we saw the figures from the Royal College of Physicians that show that the total bill in the last financial year was £260 million. Do you accept the logic of the unions that, offering a significantly higher pay rise would reduce that agency bill? It’s an investment that would pay dividends, whereas at the moment, it’s a perniciously false economy. At the very least, should we not be creating a publicly owned staff agency for the NHS so that we can strip out profit and the exorbitant costs of private sector agencies? The last Labour Government in Westminster did this through the creation of NHS Professionals, a publicly owned national staff bank owned by the Department of Health, which reinvests surpluses back in the NHS. Couldn’t we combine that with the judicious use of milestones for capping and reducing the use of private agencies over time as part of a national workforce plan, which gets to grip with the longer term crisis of retention and recruitment that I referred to?