Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced plans to crackdown on agencies providing temporary staff he claims are "ripping off the NHS". 

The government will set a new maximum hourly rate for temporary workers and cap the amount trusts in financial difficulty can spend. 

Barts Health NHS trust, which runs Whipps Cross University Hospital in Leytonstone is around £93million in debt and is in special measures after serious failings in care. 

The latest published figures show Barts Health, the largest NHS Trust in the country, spent £10,686,000 on agency nurses across its six hospitals in 2014/15. 

Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT), which runs King George Hospital in Goodmayes and Queen’s in Romford, is more than £40million in debt. 

Care failings at its hospitals have been blamed on a failure to employ and retain staff.  

It spent £1,354,865 on agency nurses in 2013/14. 

Much more is believed to have been spent on management consultants. 

New rules will ban the use of agency spending outside agreed frameworks involving rates negotiated by central government. 

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “The path to safer, more compassionate care is the same as the path to lower costs. 

“Expensive staffing agencies are quite simply ripping off the NHS. 

"It’s outrageous that taxpayers are being taken for a ride by companies charging up to £3,500 a shift for a doctor. 

“The NHS is bigger than all of these companies, so we’ll use that bargaining power to drive down rates and beat them at their own game.” 

A Barts Health NHS Trust spokesman said they were already in the process of recruiting a further 500 permanent nurses and midwives to counter the reliance on temporary staff.

He said: “The Trust’s use of agency and bank staff is to fill vacant posts while recruitment takes place, but also to meet patient needs when there is high demand for care.

“The shortage of qualified staff in London is a continual challenge in our aspirations to recruit the best talent available to care for our patients, but we will continue to explore new ways to recruit, while reducing the costly reliance on agency spend.”