More than 40,000 patients have been discharged from hospital during the night in the past two years, according to new figures from Scottish Labour.

Freedom of information requests by Dr Richard Simpson found that the number of patients discharged from hospital between 11pm and 6am totalled 40,763.

The party claims that figure is likely to be 'much higher' as it does not include returns from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Scotland’s largest health board as well as NHS Forth Valley and NHS Tayside.

Labour said the figures suggested huge pressure on hospitals, saying patients were discharged at night to free up 'desperately needed' beds.

Health secretary Shona Robison said of the figures did not always reflect the time of a patient leaving hospital and sometimes marked the time staff had entered the record.

The figures were released before the announcement of delayed discharge figures for 2015, expected to be published on Tuesday.

Scottish Labour's public services spokesperson Dr Richard Simpson said: “Now more than ever Scotland deserves a health service free at the point of delivery based on patient need not the ability to pay, equipped with the resources to deliver the care Scots deserve.

“These shocking figures suggest the huge pressure our hardworking NHS staff are under. The only significant reason to discharge a patient late at night rather than the next morning is to free up beds. This level of discharge suggests that the situations in some of our hospitals are desperate.

“Under the SNP NHS staff are undervalued and overworked, with only a third thinking they get the support they need to do their jobs. It is patients who lose out.

“Our NHS, established in the 1940s, needs to be given the resources to face the challenges of the 2040s. That means investing in social care to take the pressure off hospitals and give more patients the dignity of care in their own home. That change starts with paying care workers the living wage, and delivering a national care workers’ guarantee.”

Health Secretary Shona Robison said: "This is a complex issue and to simply say these are patients sent home from inpatient beds is wrong.

"Official figures collected by boards recording discharges from hospital will include patients being transferred to other wards in the same hospital or another hospital for more specialist care, patients who self-discharged against medical advice and those who have passed away.

"Some of these figures also reflect when boards physically enter a record of when a patient is discharged, rather than the actual time of discharge.

"These figures are also a small proportion of the hundreds of thousands of patients discharged in Scotland every year.

“Staff are always conscious that patients should not be discharged without the appropriate home support available. Patient safety is, and remains, the top priority for hospital staff discharging patients – particularly when patients are elderly or vulnerable.

"Delayed discharge is a separate, unrelated, issue but one that is also extremely important. It remains our ambition to eradicate delayed discharge from the system and we have seen significant progress over the last year. "Delayed discharge rates are falling in Scotland, in contrast to other parts of the UK which have seen sustained increases in the number of patients waiting in hospital because the appropriate care is not available in the community.

"We are working hard with local NHS and council partnerships to reduce discharge delays and announced last month an additional quarter of a billion pounds for social care in next year’s budget.”