Daily Express: Costly GP weekends

Health chiefs were forced to pay £2,240 for a doctor to work one weekend shift at an NHS clinic, it emerged yesterday.

The figure was revealed in a survey which suggests the NHS faces a £50million annual bill for patient care outside family doctors' working hours.

Oldham Primary Care Trust spent the sum hiring one locum agency medic to cover a 14-hour stretch over Easter Bank Holiday.  NHS trusts have no choice but to fork out after the introduction of new GP contracts which allow doctors to take evenings and weekends off.

Locum agencies charge up to £225 an hour and individual doctors were pocketing as much as £1,000 for a shift.  The cost of cover for GPs who opt out of working unsociable hours was last night condemned by public spending watchdogs and patient groups.

A spokesman for the TaxPayers' Alliance called it "the biggest financial bungle in the recent history of the NHS".