Criticism as bonus payments to top NHS medics hits £43m

The money was paid to senior medics in the form of “distinction awards” and “discretionary points”, on top of salaries of up to £105,000.

The bonuses go to consultants and other senior staff who perform above expectation, but there have been concerns the payments have become routine.

The latest figures suggest pay-outs rose almost £6m last year, although the true figure may be lower as there was a gap in the data relating to NHS Grampian.

In total, just over £43m was paid to 2,858 recipients in the last 12 months.

Discretionary awards for the best performing consultants can be highly lucrative.

Those given the A+ rating earn an extra £75,889 a year, those rated A get £55,924 and those rated B enjoy a salary uplift of £31,959.

The SNP Government froze the payments levels in 2010 amid criticism of the system.

In 2015, just under six per cent of all consultants received a distinction award, with just 26, or one in 200, getting an A+ award, 68 an A and 227 a B.

The rise in overall bonus payments was driven by a hike in the wider system of locally-set discretionary points, which can be worth up to £25,632 extra in pensionable salary.

The biggest bonus payouts last year were in NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, which added £12.6m to salaries, and where discretionary point recipients rose from 878 to 907.

In NHS Lothian, the number of discretionary point recipients rose from 470 to 500, adding £485,000 to a total bonus bill of £7.3m.

The bonus bill in cash-strapped NHS Tayside was £5m, for NHS Grampian £4.7m and for NHS Lanarkshire £3.3m.

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Miles Briggs said: “There’s nothing wrong with hard-working medical professionals being incentivised and rewarded for their work.

“And of course there’s an acceptance that the NHS has to pay competitively if it wants the best staff.

“But senior medics like consultants are already very well remunerated, and many - including NHS workers further down the chain - will question the sheer scale of these payments.

“The NHS is extremely hard up, and these are payments worth tens of millions of pounds.

“It’s another example of the SNP government saying it’s going to do something, then forgetting about it more or less immediately.

“Scotland’s NHS deserves a government at Holyrood which pays more attention.”

Simon Barker, chair of BMA Scotland's Consultants Committee, said NHS Scotland faced global competition to attract and retain the best staff.

He said: “These long-standing elements of the defined pay structure for consultants are intended to recognise those who contribute most in the delivery of safe, high-quality care to patients and to leading continuous improvement of NHS services.

“The NHS in Scotland faces competition in a global market when it comes to attracting doctors to work here and we are steadily losing ground. In the face of a 15 per cent real terms pay cut over the last five years there are now over 400 unfilled consultant posts in Scotland, with half of these jobs lying empty for over six months.

“Every vacant position increases the strain on the rest of the health service and makes it more difficult to cope with the rapidly increasing demands the NHS faces.

“We can only deliver high standards of healthcare if we are prepared to recognise and reward the investment of at least a decade that goes into training to be the skilled and specialist consultants that the people of Scotland deserve when they need them.”

Health Secretary Shona Robison added: “This Government values the enormous contribution NHS Scotland staff makes to the health service. Over 98 per cent of NHS employees earning in excess of £100,000 are clinicians or consultants.

“It is right that we pay the going rate, which is reviewed annually by the independent pay review bodies, in order to attract and retain highly-skilled and much sought-after staff.”