Another 23 earn over £100,000.

However, many GPs also carry out private work for pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and other non-NHS work.

Income from these sources is not included in these totals. Here we print the NHS salaries of all 295 GPs in Tayside.

Many GPs work part-time, and certainly the lower totals are likely to be for part-time doctors.

The de-personalised information was eventually revealed under Freedom of Information legislation.

The Tele began asking questions about GP salaries after claims a doctor in the Western Isles was earning £300,000 a year. These claims proved to be a hoax.

As long ago as April 24 we contacted Dr Andrew Buist, a GP in Blairgowrie who is a member of the British Medical Association’s UK GP committee.

He said the average local doctor had a pre-tax salary of between £90,000 and £100,000.

He admitted GP salaries had “risen significantly” as a result of the new GP contract with the NHS, which led to all GPs in Tayside giving up their round-the-clock responsibility for patients.

Dr Buist said he believed there would be “difficulty” finding out what individual doctors were earning, and took the view that Freedom of Information legislation would not give access to “that level of information”.

We contacted NHS Tayside’s finance department the same day and were referred to a senior civil servant in Edinburgh.

He returned our call on April 25 and discussed the complexities of how payments to family doctors are calculated.

GPs are small business people working under contract to the NHS, and are not direct employees.

The civil servant was assured that, if necessary, the Tele would accept the figures without them being linked directly to specific individuals, who might take the view their salaries, even though coming from the public purse, were private information.

“I think it is okay to give out this information because it is not personal,” he said, adding that it may be necessary to make a formal request under FOI.

This we agreed to.

Later, another civil servant from NHS Scotland’s practitioner services department in Aberdeen made contact and said what the Tele was looking for was “pensionable profit” for each GP.

GP practices are paid for services they provide and quality improvements they can demonstrate.

Pensionable profit is the amount individual GPs get after practice expenses are deducted from practice payments.

He began the number scrunching immediately.

Asked if there had been a hold-up, the civil servant confirmed the information had been passed to NHS Tayside, whose responsibility it was to release it.

Finally, that information was released today.

GPs’ earnings:—

£120,001-£130,000 — 5; £110,001-£120,000 — 9; £100,001-£110,000 — 14; £90,001-£100,000 — 38; £80,001-£90,000 — 49; £70,001-£80,000 — 61; £60,001-£70,000 — 36; £50,001-£60,000 — 34; £40,001-£50,000 — 20; £30,001-£40,000 — 17; £0-£30,000 — 12.