A CONSULTANT was paid nearly £264,000 by Scotland’s largest health board according to figures which reveal that more than 3,000 senior medics are banking six-figure salaries.

The unnamed individual was paid a salary of £263,917 in 2015/16 by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, more than double the going rate for a highly experienced consultant.

The pay packet was revealed in an analysis of the annual accounts by health board carried out by the Sunday Post, and comes amid a spiralling bill for locum doctors to plug gaps in the health service.

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Miles Briggs said: “Everyone accepts that for hospitals to get the best medical staff, they have to provide competitive pay.

“But health boards must ensure this doesn’t spiral out of control. It will be extremely demoralising for other hardworking NHS staff to see an increasing number of colleagues on astronomical salaries.”

The figures show that 2,313 NHS staff were paid between £100,000 and £150,000 last year, while 719 are on between £150,000 and £200,000.

NHS Lothian and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, the two biggest health boards, account for around half of this tally.

A further 41 people fell into the £200,000 to £250,000 category. In addition, there was one senior consultant at the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank earning between £250,000 and £300,000, and between one and five consultants at NHS Lanarkshire in this pay range.

The figures include basic salaries plus any fees for managerial roles and money paid out under the NHS “discretionary points” bonus scheme for consultants.

The median annual salary for a Scottish nurse is £26,000.

The earning details for top consultants comes against a backdrop of increasing spending on locums.

A briefing paper in February from the public spending watchdog, Audit Scotland, cautioned health bosses to find more cost- effective ways to staff hospitals and surgeries as it highlighted the surge in agency spending by health boards.

The cost of employing temporary staff – including locum consultants, GPs and nurses – had soared from £82 million in 2011/12 to £175m in 2015/16. More than £100m of that was spent on doctors amid a growing number of long-term vacancies.

Simon Barker, chairman of BMA Scotland’s consultants committee, said: “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 14 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 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 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.”

Health Secretary Shona Robison said: “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 we pay the going rate, which is reviewed annually by the independent pay review bodies, to attract and retain highly skilled staff.”

Meanwhile, figures reveal that 16,772 doctors and other health professionals were paid £116.5m in consultancy fees, travel and other costs by pharmaceutical firms in 2016. One gastroenterologist in Oxford earned an extra £129,000.