NHS pays staff £6m ... NOT to go to work

THE NHS in Scotland has paid staff almost £6 million – to stay at home.

Nearly 1,000 employees have been given their full salary over the past four years while suspended.

Since 2012, 90,000 working days have been missed by doctors, nurses and admin staff, with some individuals suspended for more than a year.

The figures come only days after a report by Scotland’s financial watchdog found the NHS faces a massive bill for temporary and agency staff to cover shortages.

Last night, experts said the NHS should not be expected to pay out so much to people who are not working, and called on the Government to speed up the suspension process.

Scottish Tory health spokesman Donald Cameron said: ‘In an organisation the size of the NHS, you would expect instances of staff suspension.

‘However, this number does seem very high – and there is a clear cost to the taxpayer.

‘The NHS is under severe financial pressure and simply can’t afford to be paying out millions to staff who stay at home.

‘This is something the Scottish Government should look at to ensure staff are only suspended on full pay when it’s absolutely necessary.’

Figures obtained by The Scottish Mail on Sunday using Freedom of Information requests showed health boards have paid staff £5,907,712.26 to be on ‘gardening leave’ since 2012.

A total of 983 employees received their full salary while on suspension – while missing 89,447 days.

The true cost and time of absence will be considerably higher, as a number of health boards did not provide information or gave figures covering shorter periods of time.

Irenee O’Neill, general secretary of the Independent Federation of Nursing in Scotland, said: ‘The fundamental problem with suspension in NHS Scotland is the time it takes to get a final decision made. Most health boards are catastrophically slow at moving things forward.

‘It is time managers and people from HR were held to account and not allow cases to go on for months and months. I have seen families and nurses destroyed when they have been on suspension because of the time it takes.’

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde paid £2,893,672 to more than 500 employees, with 34,910 working days.

A spokesman said: ‘We are the country’s largest health board, employing 38,000 staff – more than a quarter of the NHS workforce in Scotland.

‘In line with normal practice, we will sometimes suspend individual employees who have had allegations made against them until investigations have taken place.’

Last week, Scotland’s Auditor General warned the health service under SNP management was ‘struggling’ to treat patients, with NHS boards failing to meet most of their waiting times targets and being forced to make ‘unprecedented’ savings.

Its report showed that in the financial year 2015-16, the cost of agency staff soared to £175 million, with a small number of individual consultants costing £400,000 a head, including agency costs and VAT.

The number of people waiting for outpatient appointments soared by 89 per cent to 275,517 between 2009 and 2016.

‘There is a clear cost to the taxpayer’