HEALTH boards in Scotland have splashed out more than £1,500 for an agency nurse to cover a single shift, freedom of information requests revealed yesterday.

NHS Lanarkshire paid £1,565 to an agency for one shift in 2015-16, while NHS Lothian said the largest sum it spent in the last three years was £1,528.

Tayside NHS bosses confirmed they had paid £1,251 for a single shift in 2015-16, while Ayrshire & Arran estimated its highest single payment recently was between £1,300 and £1,600.

Health boards across Scotland spent a staggering £158 million in 2015-16.

Labour MSP Neil Findlay said the use of the private sector, bank and agency staff was an indication that the NHS was “under huge pressure” and warned that agencies were “profiteering” from the situation.

He told the Star that it was “extraordinary” that up to £1,500 had been spent on a single shift.

“We cannot allow money to be sucked out of the NHS like this, we need proper workforce planning to ensure the NHS is properly staffed.”

Holyrood Health Secretary Shona Robison said that agency staff were an “important part of our staffing arrangements to allow health boards to cope with peaks in demand.”

She said that health boards only use bank and agency staff when they have to and that the overall bill for agency nurses and midwives was more than 11 per cent lower than a decade ago.

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