A “FAILURE to recruit and retain front-line staff” has led the Scottish NHS to fork out more than £900 million on agency nurses and locum doctors since 2019, Scottish Labour said yesterday.

Figures obtained by the party under freedom of information laws show health boards spent £521m on agency nurses and £400m on locum consultant doctors between April 2019 and September 2024.

Nearly a fifth of the spend on agency nurses was in the country’s most populous board area, Greater Glasgow and Clyde (£103m), but pressures hit rural areas just as hard, with NHS Grampian forced to shell out £55m.

The figures for locum consultant costs show little sign of letting up either, growing once again with NHS Dumfries and Galloway, NHS Highland and NHS Lanarkshire each spending more than £4m so far this year.

Scottish Labour health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said: “These figures show the NHS is under huge pressure and is haemorrhaging money because of the SNP’s failure to recruit and retain front-line staff.

“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.

“Scottish Labour will ensure that Scotland’s NHS has a 10-year workforce plan that creates domestic medical and nursing training places, values nurses, doctors and all NHS staff — and meets the needs of future generations of patients.”

A Scottish government spokesperson said it was “working with colleagues across NHS Scotland to explore how we can reduce our reliance on agency staffing.”

But adding that the spending amounted to a “tiny fraction” of NHS Scotland’s £10bn-a-year pay bill, they said: “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.”