An NHS health board needs £31m to return its services to the same levels it provided last year, MSPs have been told.

NHS Lothian is the latest Scottish health board facing financial problems, with its counterpart NHS Tayside under fire for using millions of pounds of charitable donations to fund a new IT system.

The fresh funding shortfall was revealed in evidence to Holyrood's health committee.

Health secretary Shona Robison has criticised opposition parties calling on her to resign in recent days.

NHS Lothian's deputy chief executive Jim Crombie said the board had "characterised a gap in our ability and our capacity to deliver against the access targets".

He said: "We've been clear to the board, we've been clear to government that there is a significant element of funding that would be required to allow us to recover.

"Part of the request from the Scottish Government was to present what they characterise as an operational plan...for 2018/19 and in that we've characterised all of our intelligence around demand, all of our intelligence around efficiency, productivity and maximising the use of our resource.

"But even doing all that we've characterised a gap and we've characterised the quantum of funding that would be required to allow NHS Lothian to return to the levels of performance in terms of patients waiting over 12 weeks at March 2017."

Pressed by committee convener Lewis Macdonald on the figure, he added: "To return NHS Lothian to the position of March 2017 is £31m, circa."

Jacquie Campbell, chief officer of acute services at the health board, added: "Even if we had the funding to return to March 2017 we don't have the overarching capacity either internally or with the external providers in relation to that and there's often a lead in time in starting up capacity."

Ms Campbell was also questioned by Green MSP Alison Johnstone about progress on recruitment to paediatrics at St John's Hospital in Livingston, where staff shortages have led to a reduction in services.

She said: "We have an ongoing commitment to maintaining and delivering a 24/7 service at St John's, that hasn't changed at all.

"In terms of recruitment, despite what is a national backdrop of shortages of paediatricians, we've actually successfully recruited seven additional consultant paediatricians into NHS Lothian."

Ms Campbell said five of these were already working in the department, with one on maternity leave and another due to start in August.

In addition the health board was training two advanced paediatric nurse practitioners who would be able to participate in an out-of-hours rota towards the end of the year, and was recruiting again for more.

She said: "This is not about money, this has been an active and proactive and continuing recruitment drive but despite all of that we require 39 out of hours shifts to be covered every month and at the moment, based on our substantive staff, we could provide about 21.

"So we still have a way to go around having a sustainable out-of-hours rota."