Agency nurse was paid £1,000 for a single shift

The Health Service is wasting millions a year on agency nurses - with one hospital paying a nurse more than £1,000 for a single shift.

The payment is the most extreme example of the huge sums being spent on expensive temporary staff at a time when the NHS is rationing life- saving cancer drugs it says it cannot afford.

Agency staff were being hired as cash-strapped trusts were forced to cut the number of permanent nurses and hundreds left the service to work abroad.

New figures reveal that the pay for a senior staff nurse to cover a Bank Holiday shift at Chesterfield Royal Hospital trust worked out at £98 an hour - around nine times the average for a full-time employee.

Another trust paid an even higher hourly rate.

North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple recruited a specialist paediatric nurse at £115.65 an hour. It paid £983 for an eight-and-a-half hour shift on New Year's Eve.

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Much of this money goes into the pockets of agency bosses rather than the nurses themselves.

The figures were revealed by a Freedom of Information request among 138 hospital trusts, 58 of which replied.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said last night: "This data confirms the financial folly of employing agency staff rather than permanent staff.

"This strategy always looks like it will save money but actually ends up costing more.

"Hospitals should be more careful with patients' money so there are enough funds for life-saving treatments, many of which are currently restricted on the NHS."

Of the trusts which responded, 11 admitted having paid more than £700 for a single shift.

As well as Chesterfield and North Devon, these were Portsmouth, Worcester Acute, Royal Cornwall, Yeovil, Taunton and Somerset, Shrewsbury and Telford, Southampton University, East Sussex and Stockport.

North Devon spent £3.98million on agency staff last year - more than four per cent of its entire budget.

Earlier this year the Commons public accounts committee said more than £1billion a year was being spent on agency nurses.

A damning report found too many trusts were relying on temporary nurses because they were not managing their own staff properly.

The bill grew by 40 per cent in the five years to 2005 - despite the number of permanent NHS nurses rising by a fifth over the same period.

It meant nine per cent of the nursing budget was being spent on agency cover, with trusts in London and the South-East spending as much as 30 per cent.

Up to £85million a year could be saved if trusts knew how many staff they had and where they were needed, the MPs found. The committee's chairman, Tory

Edward Leigh, said: "Most trusts are failing to plan for and manage their demand for temporary nursing staff.

"Too many do not have the management information they need to employ temporary staff cost-effectively.

"Too many are relying on temporary nurses to mask their inability to manage their permanent staff properly."

He said the overspend on temporary staff could be putting lives at risk because 39 per cent did not receive mandatory basic life-support training.

There were also few reliable systems to ensure agency staff were not working dangerously long hours.

The Department of Health insisted in 2001 that growth in the NHS workforce would reduce the demand for agency staff. But spending on temporary nurses rose from £795million in 2000 to £1.09billion in 2005.

Last year financial problems in many trusts meant more than 20,000 nursing jobs were cut, according to the Royal College of Nursing.

More than 8,000 demoralised nurses have registered with the RCN to work abroad.

• Frontline staff say patients will die as a result of plans to downgrade or close A&E units.

Campaigners say more than 20 casualty units in England are threatened with closure while ambulance services put the figure at up to 50 of the 200 currently open all hours. Critically-ill patients will have to go to 'super A&Es' which may be many miles away.

Richard Watkins, a nurse at Rochdale Infirmary, has told this evening's edition of ITV1's Tonight with Trevor McDonald that he and his colleagues all oppose the plans.

He said: "Someone is going to die because they've got to go that bit further to get treated. It isn't going to be the people who made the decision who have to tell a family their loved one wasn't worth keeping this department open, wasn't worth the effort."