NHS boards across Scotland paid out more than £26 million in overtime to nurses and midwives last year, figures have revealed.

The overall bill for extra hours worked by nursing and midwifery staff in 2016-17 totalled £26,538,293.

That was down from the previous year, when overtime costs amounted to £27.1m but significantly up from the figure of £21.726,537 in 2014-15.

Overtime costs varied across the country, ranging from almost £8.8m in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde – Scotland’s largest health board – to less than £2000 in NHS Western Isles. The statistics were released to the Scottish Tories under Freedom of Information.

Health spokesman Miles Briggs claimed they highlighted “poor planning” by the SNP government when it came to the NHS workforce.

The figures were released at the same time as Scottish Labour launched a consultation on how to tackle what they called the NHS “workforce crisis”.

Their health spokesman, Anas Sarwar, said: “Scottish Labour is clear that solving the workforce crisis will go a long way to both addressing many of the current issues in our NHS and in social care, but also in preparing the health and social care sector for challenges such as the stubborn gap in health inequality, and an increasingly older population.

A spokesman for Health Secretary Shona Robison hit back, saying: “This is staggering hypocrisy from Labour and the Tories. The SNP has delivered all-time record high NHS spending and staffing, while Labour in office threatened to cut services the SNP then saved. And the Tories are doing huge damage to the NHS in England.

“Labour have only now launched their so-called workforce consul- tation, almost exactly a year after they said they would launch a commission within weeks. And the Tories have zero credibility given that their tax plans would leave a half-billion-pound-plus hole in the budget for the NHS and other key services.”