Payments to council chief executives for overseeing election results should be scrapped, the Scottish Conservatives have said.

Local government bosses have joined calls for a probe into the rewards, which have amounted to £1m in the past two years.

It comes in the middle of a review into the practice by the Scottish Parliament's local government and communities committee.

Scottish Conservative local government spokesman Graham Simpson said: "It's time for these eye-watering payments to stop.

"The public purse has to be protected and these payments are made to those who are very often on six-figure salaries as it is.

"This duty should simply be part of the job, not something that brings with it a one-off bonus worth tens of thousands of pounds.

"It's not the fault of the council chiefs themselves, it's the legislation which must be addressed, and that's exactly what we have to do."

Malcolm Burr, chairman of Solace Scotland, which represents council chiefs, told the Holyrood committee that public confidence in elections is high in Scotland and he is not aware of significant concern over the payments.

Mr Burr, who is also chief executive of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, the local authority in the Outer Hebrides, said Solace would be "very happy" to contribute to a review.

He said: "Any system benefits from review. There are certain aspects of it, for example the expectation that depute returning officers, who play a key role in the delivery of elections, are remunerated from the returning officer's fee - as it were of our charity - is a very strange and somewhat antediluvian way of looking at remuneration of public servants."

Mr Burr told MSPs he had "on occasion" shared his fee with depute returning officers.

Mary Pitcaithly, convener of the Electoral Management Board for Scotland and chief executive of Falkirk Council, said the board would also be happy to participate in a review.

Pitcaithly, who was the chief counting officer for 2014's Scottish independence referendum, said: "I would not want to say anything about my charity-giving in public, it's not something you do to get some sort of public kudos, but I certainly would normally share my fee with depute returning officers who work for me."

She added: "People don't work in elections for the money, we are not in it for the money, we are committed as local authority officers at whatever level to making sure that we run elections that at the end of the day we can all be proud of.

"All of that is not done because there might be some money at the end of it but because we are committed public servants who want to deliver a good job in what is a core element of our civic life and the democracy of the country."

Annemarie O'Donnell, chief executive of Glasgow City Council, said she believes all returning officers would be happy to participate in a review.

She told the committee: "I receive the highest fee as returning officer in Scotland. I wouldn't want to disclose what I do with my fee but what I would advise the committee is that a number of people and organisations do benefit from the returning officer fee."