Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust spent £2.9 million on agency doctors last year - with one shift costing £2,581

Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust spent as much as £2,581 on a single doctor’s shift last year, according to figures from the Labour Party.

In response to a freedom of information request, the Trust has revealed that it shelled out £2,900,000 on doctors from private agencies to plug gaps in its workforce.

In total the NHS has spent £4.6 billion on agency doctors in the last five years.

This year agencies who provide doctors and nurses at short notice were paid a total of £3 billion from the NHS – a 20 per cent increase compared with last year.

Stephen Morgan, MP for Portsmouth South, said: ‘Desperate hospitals are forced to pay rip-off fees to agencies, because the Tories have failed to train enough doctors and nurses over the past 12 years.

‘It is infuriating that, while Portsmouth taxpayers are paying over the odds on agency staff, the government has cut medical school places, turning away thousands of straight-A students in England.

‘Labour will tackle the root cause of the crisis in the NHS, training 7,500 more doctors and 10,000 more nurses a year, paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status. Portsmouth people need doctors and nurses, not non-doms.’

The Labour Party says it would abolish the non-dom tax status in order to raise the cash needed to double the number of medical school places, which could train 15,000 new doctors a year and 10,000 new nurses and midwives every year.