Anger over £900m NHS bill for agency nurses and locum doctors

The NHS is "haemorrhaging money" after spending almost £900m on agency nurses and locum doctors, Scottish Labour claims.

The Scottish Government says the sum, spent since 2019, is a "tiny fraction" of the overall pay bill.

But Scottish Labour is calling on the SNP administration to "urgently improve NHS recruitment". Jackie Baillie, the party's health spokesperson, said: "After nearly 18 years of SNP incompetence, staff are demoralised and exhausted as vacancies are not being filled – and it’s costing the taxpayer millions."

Figures show health boards spent £521m on agency nurses and £400m on locum consultant doctors from 2019 to September last year.

For NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, which is the largest health board in Scotland, the spend was in excess of £103m, while for NHS Grampian it was almost £55m.

The figures come from Freedom of Information requests and show spending of more than £4m on local consultant doctors during the first half of this financial year by each of the Dumfries and Galloway, Highland and Lanarkshire health boards.

Baillie said the results show the health service "is under huge pressure and is haemorrhaging money because of the SNP's failure to recruit and retain frontline staff".

The Scottish Government said: "NHS Scotland’s staffing pay bill is over £10bn a year, with spending on agency nursing a tiny fraction of this. 

"The use of temporary staff in an organisation as large and complex as NHS Scotland will always be required to ensure vital service provision during times of unplanned absence, sickness and increased unforeseen activity. It is however critical that we seek to secure best value whenever we are delivering services within NHS Scotland, allowing us to maximise the impact that our investment has on the quality and availability of patient care. Accordingly, we are working with colleagues across NHS Scotland to explore how we can reduce our reliance on agency staffing."