By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

NHS Tayside paid 191 hospital doctors over £100,000 each last year.

The top earner was Mr Mike Lyall, who banked between £165,000 and £170,000. Mr Lyall, a former surgeon, recently retired as medical director.

NHS Tayside’s chief executive Professor Tony Wells was paid between £125,000 and £130,000.

The information is contained in the draft accounts for the year to the end of March 2006 laid before the health authority’s audit committee meeting in Kings Cross Hospital, Dundee, yesterday.

External auditor Lynn Bradley, director of audit for Audit Scotland, gave the accounts a clean bill of health.

“I think this year you have done a terrific job,” she said. “I am giving you a clean audit certificate.”

The health authority that spent over £600 million in the region last year balanced its books for the fifth year in succession. The accounts show an underspend of just over £1 million, a fraction of 1% of the total budget.

Committee chairman John Angus said the amount health boards spent on administration had been raised nationally and he said he would make no apology for cash spent on administration, explaining it was a vital expense to allow doctors to get on with their jobs.

“If we want clinicians to be able to do their job and not sit typing or putting stuff in to computers or having to write their own letters, then we do need support staff,” said Mr Angus.

“The more we ask them to do in terms of their contract, the more support they need.

“I don’t apologise for that.

“It is important that support is provided or we are going to have clinicians not doing what they are paid for.

“I support the provision of administrative staff at the appropriate level.”

The committee members agreed to recommend approval of the draft accounts that will now be placed before the full board at its next meeting on June 29. They will then be passed to the Scottish Parliament and considered there following the summer recess before being made publicly available.