SHADOW health secretary Andy Burnham protested yesterday against the millions of pounds squandered by stretched A&E departments on expensive temporary doctors.

Shock data obtained by the Labour Party under the Freedom of Information Act showed that spending on locum doctors — brought in when hospitals are short-staffed — has increased 60 per cent over the last three years.
Agency doctors are now employed for almost one in 10 consultant shifts, earning up to £1,500 per shift.

Employing these locums costs up to four times more than a permanent doctor, pushing spending on temporary A&E doctors up to £83.3 million last year at 108 hospital trusts checked by Labour.

During sharp Commons exchanges, Mr Burnham called the figures “staggering.”
He said it had now come to light that the government was warned about the situation three years ago by College of Emergency Medicine president Dr Cliff Mann.

Dr Mann had complained that when he tried to raise the issue, he was “like John the Baptist crying in the wilderness.”

Health Minister Dan Poulter retorted that the first warnings about challenges faced by A&E departments were given to the Labour government in 2004.

He pleaded that it took six years to train an A&E consultant, so therefore it took six years to deal with the problem.

The minister’s efforts to counter the Labour attack were deflated when Speaker Bercow sternly told him that his answers were almost invariably “far too long.”

Mr Bercow added in a school-masterly tone: “It is nothing to be smug about. He has really got to improve.”

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt repeatedly claimed that A&E departments were doing better under this government than they did under Labour.

Hackney Labour MP Meg Hillier retorted: “The minister talks complacently about improvements in A&E consultants, but in Queen’s Hospital in Romford only seven out of 19 posts have permanent A&E medical doctors.”

Left MP Grahame Morris pointed out that half a million “delayed bed days” had been caused last year by cuts in social care preventing people’s release from hospital A&E departments.

rogerbagley@peoples-press.com