A YEAR ago, we reported that York Hospital had been forced to spend a whopping £13.5 million on expensive temporary nurses and doctors because it couldn’t recruit enough permanent staff.

This was double the outlay on agency staff the previous year - and would have paid for 226 experienced nurses on full-time salaries. The hospital, we revealed,was prepared to pay ridiculous rates for agency staff in some circumstances - up to £150 an hour for a nurse.

York Hospital wasn’t alone in facing this problem a year ago.

The Royal College of Nursing claimed that years of pay restraint, changes to terms and conditions and cuts in training places were making it increasingly difficult to recruit - and that hospitals therefore had little choice but to pay through the nose for temporary agency staff.

The NHS’s money was being wasted on “extortionate agency fees”, York Outer MP Julian Study said. We said the situation couldn’t continue, because it was crippling the NHS financially.

Well, it hasn’t continued - it has got a whole lot worse.

In the most recent year, York Hospital spent a staggering £27.4 million on temporary doctors and nurses - double again what it paid last year.

The NHS is being brought to its knees by these extortionate charges. And you can bet it won’t be the nurses and doctors themselves who will really be benefiting. No doubt the agencies themselves are taking a huge cut.

With recruitment still obviously a huge problem - and likely to get worse in future once we leave Europe - perhaps it is time the Government took steps to introduce a tariff of maximum charges that agencies can levy.

That may be the only way of limiting the profiteering that is eating the NHS alive.