Professor John Robertson OBA
Thanks to Brenda Robb for alerting me tot his.
In Nursing Times yesterday:
The latest NHS pay offer in Scotland “sends a really powerful message” to other UK countries about what can be achieved through direct pay negotiations, Unison Scotland’s co-lead for health has said.
Speaking with Nursing Times, Matt McLaughlin said other UK countries were “hiding behind bureaucracy” when it comes to NHS pay and it was “no good” for the health service.
“In the other parts of the UK, it seems that people are hiding behind bureaucracy”
Matt McLaughlin
Scotland is the first UK country to table a pay offer for 2025-26.
In contrast, England, Wales and Northern Ireland are all facing delays waiting for recommendations of the NHS Pay Review Body (PRB) before an offer can be made.
The UK Government has already told the PRB that a 2.8% pay increase is all it can afford for NHS staff in England in 2025-26.
There’s more in the full report praising the efforts of the SNP Government but none of it makes it into Lisa Summer’s ‘Analysis’:
The gamble here is that it doesn’t know what deal will be offered to NHS staff elsewhere in the UK as negotiations are ongoing. However, the UK government has so far said it would recommend a 2.8% increase, a move described as “offensive” by unions.
If the pay deal is significantly higher for Scotland, the government will have to find the money to pay for it with no additional money coming from Westminster. That could lead to cuts in services or scaling back recruitment to meet the cost of salary increases.
What is the basis for Summers’ gloomy prognosis and neglect of the Unison comment? There is none, other than a Unionist anti-SNP agenda. Had Unison criticised the Scottish Government’s offer you can be sure that would have been central to her ‘analysis’.
Summers has a long history of pessimistic and dishonest coverage of NHS Scotland.
How she lied about Covid deaths in 2020:
How she lied about ambulance availability in 2023:
How she made up the idea that NHS Tayside was ‘dysfunctional’:
How she lied about cancer deaths:
I could go on but you’ve maybe had enough.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
The main post has this: ‘… Lisa Summers’ ‘Analysis’: The gamble here is that it doesn’t know what deal will be offered to NHS staff elsewhere in the UK as negotiations are ongoing. However, the UK government has so far said it would recommend a 2.8% increase, a move described as “offensive” by unions.
‘If the pay deal is significantly higher for Scotland, the government will have to find the money to pay for it with no additional money coming from Westminster …’
Ms Summers exposes the sham – and the trap – of devolution. The NHS is the responsibility of the devolved government; voters who decide on the party of government need and want a decent health service; a decent health service requires decent relationships between devolved government, NHS management, NHS staff and their unions; NHS workers need and want a decent wage; their unions will support their needs and wants, and will facilitate industrial action to achieve these if necessary.
And of course, industrial action in NHS Scotland – or staff recruitment/ retention problems arising from pay issues – would be seized upon by Ms Summers, her journalist colleagues in other pro-Union media outlets and by pro-Union opposition political parties, all intent in turning any failure to avoid harmful industrial action into an election issue.
So a devolved government wishes to respond positively to staff/union demands. But in its overall budget planning, it has to ‘gamble’ as Ms Summers states – because ‘it doesn’t know what deal will be offered to NHS staff elsewhere in the UK’. Candidly, it can’t know unless Westminster government works with it and informs it. Of course, there is political advantage for the party of government in Westminster deciding against working with and/or informing an SNP government in Scotland, especially on such a crucial public service as the NHS.
In the end, the Scottish Government is dependent on another government, dependent on the latter’s decisions about how to respond to England’s particular needs and wants regarding the NHS. Devolved responsibility doesn’t mean having full agency! The Scottish Government according to Ms Summers’ logic either has to spectate until Westminster decides even on a devolved matter or has to gamble. Or it could raise more revenue using its relatively minor basket of devolved tax powers, ones that just happen mostly to be limited to personal/household taxation and therefore ones over which voters are most sensitive. What a way to be governed!
However, Ms Summers makes one error when she writes this about the situation facing the Scottish Government: ‘doesn’t know what deal will be offered to NHS staff elsewhere in the UK ..’. It is not what transpires in NI and Wales that matters here: it is what happens in England. What England wants and then gets from its government is the key factor here, not what happens ‘elsewhere in the UK’ – on funding for NHS staff pay as on so many other aspects of funding devolved public services!
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Summed up perfectly.
Wake up people !
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As more thoroughly exposed above, Lisa sees all through the lens of Westminster, the usual anal aspect of her analysis, but she is far from alone in projecting that perspective https://archive.ph/f3R1N
Graeme Ogston of BBC Scotland News and Hugh Pym BBC Health Editor introduce the UK pay offer by the 4th paragraph, the impact on SG’s budget by the 5th, Wes Streeting by the 11th, the “The pay review body” absent the usual nonsense adjective of “independent” by the 12th, and so it goes on.
Were a poll to be conducted in England on whether what SG have put on the table should be adopted by the UK government, the answer would be a resounding yes, as it would restore some sanity to a NHS system squeezed to breaking point over decades.
There is nothing normal about Westminster or it’s Ministers….
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SNHS funded £18Billion + social care. Scottish revenues lost to UK poor, bad policies, Brexit, Trident, redundant weaponry, HS2, Hickley Point, illegal wars, financial fraud. £Billions lost in Scottish revenues that could have been spent on NHS, Education and welfare. Instead of years of austerity. Scotland pay interest on monies not borrowed or spent in Scotland. Tax evasion, illegal wars, financial fraud by Westminster Gov. Scotland has to pay for it.
Westminster is a total fraud. Reported to increase NHS funding £22Billion. Cutting disabled payment. More people will end up in hospital. Increasing Defence (attack) spending £5Billion. Cutting £5Billion from disability funding.
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KEEP ON KEEPING ON SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT
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