To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department plans to take to ensure that the use in recruitment of Master Vendor by health trusts does not reduce the level of competition for vacancies in those trusts.

Trusts in the National Health Service are independent employers and it is for them to decide how best to recruit and deploy their staff to deliver services to patients in the most efficient and effective way.

My Rt. hon. Friend, the Secretary of State, announced on 2 June 2015 a series of controls to reduce the level of agency costs in the NHS and these measures include ensuring agency staff are procured from framework agreements that have been competitively tendered to comply with European Union procurement legislation.