TEMPORARY doctors are charging as much as £1,400 per day to plug staff shortages across Scotland.

Figures show locum GPs are being paid more than £100 an hour to keep Scotland’s health service up and running.

It comes as Gordon Brown warned the NHS would be “in trauma” within a decade if Scotland became independent.

The former prime minister said the NHS would be a “diminished service” after separation, and repeated his claims that the SNP’s latest independence blueprint would lead to austerity.

Statistics reveal GPs charged as much as £1,400 per day for cover in Orkney in 2016/17, the latest year for which figures are available, while in NHS Lanarkshire charges were as high as £1,132 per day.

Average daily rates for locum GPs varied across Scotland, from just £90 in Dumfries and Galloway to £851.52 in Lanarkshire. Five health boards – including Greater Glasgow and Clyde and the Lothians – failed to provide information.

Earlier this year, it emerged NHS spending on agency workers had reached more than £300 million for the first time ever.

Scottish Labour, which obtained the latest figures through Freedom of Information laws, insisted it was “utterly shocking that the SNP GP crisis has created a situation where locum costs are over a thousand pounds a day”.

Shadow health secretary Anas Sarwar said: “The reality is the SNP has underfunded primary care for over a decade and as a result family doctors are left over stretched, overworked and under too much pressure.”

But a spokesman for new Health Secretary Jeane Freeman accused Labour of talking down the NHS instead of celebrating its achievements as it turns 70.

He said: “Investment in our health service is currently at a record high, and we aim to increase the number of GPs by at least 800 over ten years to ensure a sustainable service that meets increasing demand.

“We are continuing to drive down the use of agencies and have been clear with boards that they should only use agency as a last resort when temporary staff are required.”

Writing in The Scotsman, Mr Brown argued Scotland’s health service is currently "under-staffed, under-equipped and under-financed", despite Theresa May recently announcing a £20 billion funding boost, translating to an extra £2bn north of the Border.

He wrote: "The NHS at 80 years old would, sadly, be in trauma if independence should ever happen.

"What has become clear from the SNP's Growth Commission blueprint – what Nicola Sturgeon calls the foundation for independence – is that public spending would rise less than under Tory austerity and that even then, any new money there is would be eaten up by massive interest rate payments on what would be almost £100 billion of new Scottish debt."

Mr Brown previously warned austerity will be “here until doomsday” under the SNP and its proposals for independence.