NHS senior managers have spent over £350million on agency staff in just 20 months, the Sunday Mail can reveal.
The eye-watering bill includes tens of millions funnelled into the pockets of private company directors who charge health boards thousands of pounds a day for doctors and nurses – and take a huge cut of the fee.
The revelation comes as Scottish hospitals face a winter of chaos after staff employed directly through the NHS voted to walk out on strike over low pay.
One nurse said: “If Health Secretary Humza Yousaf would just give us the pay we deserve, then there would be enough staff employed through the NHS and we wouldn’t need to shell out all these millions to agencies.
“It is a complete scandal. As things stand, agency owning middlemen are earning huge fortunes while we are barely being paid enough to feed our families and keep the heating on.
“Yousaf is shooting himself in the foot and there is not going to be anyone there to bandage it up at this rate.”
Agency staff spending of £357,229,560.57 at Scottish health boards between January 2021 and August 2022 was revealed in a freedom of information release to Labour’s Alex Rowley MSP.
He said: “The SNP keep telling us this is a small part of the NHS budget but £350million is still a significant amount of money, much of which is going straight into the pockets of private agencies. The use of agencies is increasing at a worrying rate and this money would be far better spent on patients rather than lining the pockets of the profiteers.”
A Royal College of Nursing’s ballot on industrial action was overwhelmingly backed by nurses in Scotland last week after they rejected a five per cent pay offer.
It is the first time in the RCN’s 106-year history that members have voted to strike across the UK, with the first wave of action expected over Christmas.
The nurses join their colleagues in the Royal College of Midwives, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and the GMB and Unite unions in voting for industrial action.
Workers claim they face a cost-of-living crisis as inflation runs above 10 per cent and have demanded a double-digit pay rise.
A newly qualified NHS nurse earns about £27,000 a year but in September the Sunday Mail revealed how hospitals are being forced to fund flights and hotels for agency nurses on £100 an hour amid a staffing crisis.
For nurses alone, there has been a 2000 per cent increase in private contractors over the last decade – from £3.9million in 2012 to £88.9million today.
NHS Scotland is also paying about £102million a year for agency doctors and dentists – up from £67million in 2014.
Shocking figures published last week revealed more than 9600 patients waited over four hours in the emergency department in the final week of October.
Just 63.1 per cent were treated and either admitted, transferred or discharged within the target time. Last week it emerged the NHS in England was being forced to pay agencies up to £2500 for a single nursing shift.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “Spend on agency is around less than two per cent of the total NHS expenditure. The majority of temporary staffing in NHS Scotland comes from staff banks – these are NHS staff, working on NHS terms and conditions.”
