The SNP have been accused of “failing Scotland's health service”
as it emerged that nearly £2 billion has been spent on agency and
bank nurses and midwives over the last five years.
Figures highlighted by Scottish Labour shows that a bill of
£1,904,286,884.04 has been racked up between April 2020 and March
2025.
The spending was accumulated across all of Scotland's 14 health
boards, as well as from specialist services including the
Scottish Ambulance Service and NHS 24.
Despite some improvement on the previous year, the annual cost of
agency and bank nurses in 2024-25 was still more than double the
cost in 2018-19 and close to triple the cost in 2014-15.
However, Scottish Labour has long warned about the impact of the
SNP's failure to recruit permanent staff whilst vacancies for
nurses and midwives remain at over 2,600.
Commenting on the figures, Scottish Labour Health
Spokesperson MSP said: “The
SNP has spent almost two decades mismanaging our health service,
opting for short-term fixes, rather than coming up with a
solution to address long-term challenges.
“The use of temporary staff is an expensive sticking plaster and
cannot be a substitute for a proper plan aimed at tackling the
significant problems facing the NHS.
“This is an unsustainable way of managing our health service and
ministers must listen to calls for a workforce plan to meet
recruitment needs.”
ENDS
NHS Scotland workforce | Turas
Data Intelligence
There were 2601.2 nursing and midwifery vacancies as of 31 March
2025: https://turasdata.nes.nhs.scot/data-and-reports/official-workforce-statistics/all-official-statistics-publications/03-june-2025-workforce/dashboards/nhs-scotland-workforce/?pageid=14063
