These religious provisions, funded by taxpayer money, could instead be used to pay for 1,300 extra nurses or 2,645 cleaners.
Figures out today have revealed that the NHS (National Health Service) is spending upwards of £32 million a year employing religious personnel in its hospitals – an amount that could be used to fund an extra 1,300 nurses or 2,645 cleaners instead.
After obtaining the data under the Freedom of Information Act, the National Secular Society (NSS - which represents atheists, agnostics and other non-believers) is now calling for Health Minister Ben Bradshaw and the Department of Health to conduct a full scale investigation into whether this money could be better spent elsewhere.
The NSS have suggested that the cost should be footed by churches and religious organisations rather than the tax payer.
As part of their research the NSS contacted each NHS mental and acute health trust within the UK asking for information on their outlay for religious services.
From these they received 233 detailed responses back, together amounting to a total spend of £26.72million a year on religious services, with each hospital chaplain costing the NHS an average £48,953 a year.
Once they extrapolated these figures to encompass spending within all NHS trusts they were able to approximate a total annual spend of over £32 million on clergy staff.
However, according to the NSS, this sizable amount is just the tip of the iceberg as it accounts for salary payments alone and doesn’t take into consideration other ‘extras’ funded by the taxpayer.
They estimated that it was necessary to add a ‘conservative 20%’ to this figure in order to represent additional costs such as pension and national insurance contributions, training, office and administration costs and the upkeep of chapels and prayer rooms also incurred by NHS trusts. This would pitch the total spend upwards of £40 million a year and still not cover the organist fees and call-out charges requested by some chaplains.
President of the NSS Terry Sanderson commented:"We are not asking for an end to chaplaincy services, but we are asking that the taxpayer not be made responsible for them."
"In these times of financial stringency, hospitals are going to have to think very carefully about how they spend their budgets.
"It would be better if their own vicar, priest, rabbi or imam came to see them if they felt in need of religious support.
"I think if people were given the choice they would choose the latter [nurses or cleaners] because frontline services are under pressure, they are going to be increasingly so as the recession bites, and it's important that savings are made wherever they can be" he said.
In response, a representative of the Department of Health said it was "committed to the principle of ensuring that NHS patients have access to the spiritual care that they want, whatever faith or belief system they follow"
