SPENDING on NHS agency staff in the Borders has more than trebled over a period of five years.

In 2011-12, the NHS spent £1.5m on agency staff in the region, and that figure has steadily increased, rising to £5.07m for 2016-17.

The figures were announced by Shona Robison, the Scottish Government’s health secretary, during a parliamentary debate at Holyrood. 

The data also shows that nationally, NHS Scotland spent £171m on agency staff. 

South Scotland list MSP Colin Smyth said: “The soaring costs of agency spending for nursing and midwifery jobs in the past 10 years shows the absolute mess the SNP government has made of workforce planning in the NHS.

“There are now shortages of staff in almost every area and, as a result, NHS Borders has to spend over £5m a year on agency staff, a rise of just under 400 per cent. 

“The private agencies who provide the staff will be taking their cut and profiteering form the workforce crisis in our NHS. This is money which should be going to pay NHS staff that work all year round to provide healthcare for us.

“That is why I am supporting moves to cap the amount of money a private agency can charge to provide staff, so the money put into our NHS is not used to support the profits of agencies but on providing the world class healthcare.”

A spokesperson for NHS Borders said: “There is a requirement to fill rotas and make sure staffing levels are adequate to ensure the safe delivery of care. When we have vacancies, this creates locum or agency cost.

“Unplanned activity also plays a big part when having to use agency staff. Opening extra in-patient beds due to an increased demand for our services can lead to a requirement for additional staff.

“During 2017, we successfully recruited a number of consultants including consultant anaesthetists, consultant psychiatrists, a consultant general surgeon, a consultant radiologist and consultant physicians in gastroenterology and stroke medicine. 

“All of these vacancies are specialties for which there is a shortage of qualified consultants, and the services were previously sustained by a reliance on agency doctors. 

“In addition, last year until August, we experienced a high number of gaps in training grade doctor rotations recruited through the Scottish medical training system. 

“The allocation of training doctor numbers to NHS Borders was much more favourable in the August 2017 rotation and, as result, there is no further long-term reliance on agency doctors to maintain junior doctor rotas.

"We project costs of agency junior doctors will also have reduced significantly from August 2017.”

Health secretary Shona Robison said: “Spend on nursing agency staff is very low, representing just 0.4 per cent of the overall nursing budget. The majority of temporary shifts are filled from the NHS staff bank. 

“There are also more than 35,000 nurses registered on the staff bank who are NHS staff on NHS contracts working at NHS rates of pay.

“We are leading the way on workforce planning, becoming the first nation in the UK to publish a national health and care workforce plan.

“In addition, we have committed to introducing a new safe staffing law which will ensure appropriate staffing for high-quality care and enable further improvements in workforce planning, meaning we will have the right number of staff, with the right skills, in place across health and social care.”