By stewartb

Lisa Summers’ ‘Analysis’ of the Scottish Nurses 8% pay deal:

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. 

Industrial action is the last thing the NHS in Scotland needs in these times, it is the last thing patients want to see.

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!