Thousands of sacked NHS staff have been rehired after being handed generous redundancy packages because of "shambolic" Tory leadership, government figures revealed yesterday.

Almost 4,000 managers and administrators who have been made redundant in the last four years have had to be re-employed by the health service.

The staff have been potentially hired back at even greater expense because of the proliferation of employment agencies. They have also been allowed to keep their redundancy packages despite David Cameron promising that would not be the case.