The Scottish Conservatives have said that the NHS workforce is reaching “crisis point” as new figures reveal that funding on temporary staff in the last year has reached £423m.

This new figure is an increase of 30% from the previous year – and almost double what was spent on provisional staff in 2014/15.

It comes after the Royal College of Nursing and Royal College of Radiology warned that extreme shortages in nurses and cancer specialists were “threatening patient safety”.

The Tories have accused the SNP of providing “wasteful management” to the NHS and have called on health secretary Humza Yousaf to commit to an overhaul of the health provider’s workforce.

Scottish conservative health spokesman, Dr Sandesh Gulhane, said: “These figures are a damning indictment of the SNP’s wasteful and inefficient management of our NHS.

“Having been both fully employed and a locum doctor with the NHS, I know that locum doctors and nurses are an essential part of our healthcare service – but under the SNP, they have become a crutch for our chronically understaffed system.

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