Scotland's health boards have paid out more than £70m over the past three years in clinical negligence cases relating to stillbirths and babies born with disabilities.

New figures reveal that NHS Health Scotland has handed over nearly £70.5m in damages and spent a further £3m on legal costs between January 2009 and June last year.

The figures cover a total of 30 cases. A further 44 claims were closed with no compensation paid and 96 were still open at the end of June 2011.

The cases all related to stillbirths or major physical or mental defects, which arose during pregnancy or perinatally due to the negligence of medical staff.

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Jackson Carlaw said: "Compensation seems to increase without direct accountability; no one is ever disciplined for negligence.

"This easy rush to compensation will, in the medium term, lead to higher insurance health premiums which NHS health boards will only be able to meet at the expense of front line services.

"Compensation must be paid in response to a genuine incident. However, to reduce the need for claims those responsible should be held to account, lessons learned and procedures changed to prevent repeat incidents.

"Compensation should not become a carpet under which inconvenient truths can be swept."

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "We are committed to making sure that all patients receive high-quality care from our NHS and that is why we introduced our world-leading national patient safety programme to improve the safety and quality of care for patients in Scotland.

"We are also developing a specific patient safety programme for maternity care and have a refreshed framework to ensure that maternity care is individualised to the needs of the woman and her baby.

"It is vital that when clinical negligence claims do arise, NHS boards learn from these cases and put steps in place to ensure that there is no repeat in future."