Almost £37 million was paid out in bonuses to staff at quangos and in the NHS last year.

The Liberal Democrats said that answers to Freedom of Information requests showed £36.969m was paid out to public sector bodies in the 2008-09 financial year.

Of that, £26m was paid out in so-called "distinction awards" for senior NHS doctors. Scottish Water paid out almost £4.3m and the Scottish Prison Service £1.3m. Almost £1.9m went on core Scottish Government bonuses.

The Lib Dems called on the Scottish Government to get tough on bonuses during the economic crisis.

The party's finance spokesman Jeremy Purvis MSP said: "We've been calling on the SNP for months to get a grip of quango bonuses. The government refused to tell us how much they were spending on bonuses, but Freedom of Information requests reveal that almost £37m of taxpayers' money was paid out in bonuses to quango staff.

"Hundreds of people are still losing their jobs as unemployment in Scotland continues to grow at a faster rate than the rest of the UK. Yet this government thinks that it's acceptable to spend public money on bumper bonuses.

"Ministers cannot stick their heads in the sand any longer. Their usual excuse that contracts were signed by the previous administration was blown out of the water when the Finance Secretary admitted that he had renegotiated the pay and contracts of employees of 19 public bodies.

"It's up to the SNP to step in and stop the bonus culture in our quangos."

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "These figures mostly relate to NHS distinction awards which the Scottish Government has now frozen, both in terms of the number of health staff receiving them - something which is not happening in the rest of the UK - and their actual value.

"We want a review of NHS distinction awards to make them fairer and so that they better reflect the current economic climate, and that is something we are taking forward with the new Westminster Government.

"In terms of the other bodies, core Scottish Government bonuses have fallen dramatically by a third since 2006 and are around 60 times less than those paid across UK Government departments. The pay of senior Scottish Government officials is a reserved issue, so decisions on that framework are taken by Westminster.

"When it comes to the wider public sector, Scottish ministers have set an example by taking a pay freeze, which will also apply to senior civil servants, and the Cabinet has agreed to extend that approach to the highest paid people across the public sector who come under our remit."