LABOUR MP Brian Donohoe said today that directors of NHS trusts in

Scotland were being paid a total of nearly #11m and called for action

from Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth.

Giving the results of a survey of the 1994/95 annual reports of the 39

NHS trusts operating in Scotland before April this year, Mr Donohoe said

the directors of the 34 Scottish trusts who responded had received

#10.8m in total in 1994/95, compared with #4.7m for the 16 trusts

existing in 1993/94.

He added that the remuneration of the directors of the trusts had

topped #10m for the first time in the NHS in Scotland and said that this

''speaks volumes about the costs incurred by the NHS in Scotland as a

result of their obsession with trust status.''

Trust status, he said, had started to bring the pay and perks excesses

of the privatised utilities to the NHS, and the Scottish Office should

step in before it got any worse.

The survey revealed, he said, that in a great many trusts, the call

for pay restraint had fallen on deaf ears among trust senior management.

''Whilst awarding their nursing and ancillary staff increases in salary

of 3%, some trust chief executives and trust boards have been happy to

award themselves well above this.

''The fact that the Secretary of State for Scotland is now seeking to

restrict the pay and perks of NHS senior management is welcome but it

looks like too little too late.''

Mr Donohue said Mr Forsyth appeared to have forgotten that a new pay

structure of NHS management was implemented just over two years ago by

the Scottish Office. These figures showed that the Scottish Office's

guidance clearly had not worked.

The survey showed that the trust whose members received the highest

level of remuneration in 1994/95 was the board of Grampian Healthcare

which received #419,000, an increase of 17.5% on the #356,000 of the

previous year. The highest-paid chief executive was Grampian

Healthcare's Jeremy Taylor, whose remuneration increased to #101,000 in

1994/95.

The chief executives of the 34 trusts received a total of #2,297,000

in remuneration, an increase from the previous financial year of

#1,008,000, when there were only 16 NHS trusts operating.

A Scottish Office spokesman said later that Mr Forsyth had taken

urgent action last week to curb administration costs in the NHS and had

said he wanted #14m cut off costs.

Mr Forsyth had called on senior managers to ''lead by example''.

The spokesman said Mr Geoffrey Scaife, chief executive of the NHS in

Scotland, had written to trust chairmen, asking them to ensure that any

further increases in pay for senior management could be fully supported

in public and to make sure the maximum possible of NHS funds were put

into patient care.