Scotland is delivering the best pay deals in the UK for NHS staff

by the SNP
Posted on
8 months ago
3 min read

The SNP is committed to protecting Scotland’s workforce and public services. Scotland remains the only country in the UK to have been successful in averting NHS strikes.

Behind the recent public sector pay deals, and the Scottish Government ensuring that Scotland’s NHS has suffered from no strikes, is our commitment to creating a fairer, more resilient Scotland.

While the SNP has avoided strikes through negotiating and keeping NHS services running, the Tories have run services into the ground in England, while the Labour-run government in Wales are failing to deliver fair pay settlements and are facing a junior doctor’s strike.

A fair and resilient Scotland

The Scottish Government not only successfully prevented NHS strikes but the pay deals agreed by the SNP for NHS Staff, trainee doctors and trainee dentists are the best pay deals across the UK.

In Scotland, the NHS staff pay deal is a rise of 7.5-11%, equating to pay rises ranging from £2,205 to £2,751, depending on staff pay band. Furthermore, Junior doctors and dentists accepted a pay deal offer of 12.4%.

The robust pay deals offered by the SNP’s government play a crucial role in retaining Scotland’s NHS workforce, improving the well-being of NHS staff, and ensuring the sustainability of NHS Scotland’s ability to provide efficient services amidst the current challenges it faces.

Retaining and recruiting NHS staff is imperative at a time when there is added barriers to recruitment stemming from the aftermath of Westminster’s hard Brexit.

Tories incapacity to prioritise the NHS causes the largest NHS Staff strike in history

Yet again, the Tory UK government is failing to prioritise the NHS. The Tories failure to properly fund the NHS and protect it from privatisation, has resulted in the largest strike in the 75-year history of the NHS.

The Tories offered a pay deal rise of just 5% to NHS staff and a 6% rise to doctors. An offer that clearly fails to protect the tens of thousands of dedicated men and women who work in NHS England in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis made by Westminster itself.

Many of their staff will continue striking in the Autumn, at a time when the demand for healthcare starts to increase. Whereas in Scotland, the NHS will be fully staffed and funded thanks to actions by the SNP Scottish Government.

The UK government have shown themselves not to be trustworthy, and are letting workers and patients down miserably by not protecting and prioritising the NHS in England.

The Tories desire to privatise the NHS is abundantly clear and they have been working to undermine the NHS by stealth, through underfunding the NHS consistently.

Meanwhile, their privatising of NHS care corresponds with a decline in quality and “significantly increased” rates of death from treatable causes. 

Labour’s pay deals are a pale imitation of the Tories

Labour in Wales have also failed to avert NHS strikes, where trainee doctors and dentists have rejected their recent pay offer of 5% – the lowest pay offer any government in the UK has offered and less than the pay review body for doctors and dentists, recommended earlier this year. 

Furthermore, Keir Starmer has been making abrupt Labour policy u-turns, proving that Labour can’t be trusted anymore than the Tories.

The Labour government in Wales’ pay deal for NHS staff ranges between a 5-8% increase compared to Scotland’s pay deal at 7.5-11%.

What is even more concerning is that the pro-Brexit Labour Party has dropped their policy pledge to end private sector outsourcing in the NHS.

Out of the UK, it’s the SNP that are demonstrating a commitment to prioritising and protecting the NHS and NHS staff- offering the best pay deals in the UK and avoiding NHS strikes, helping to support the successes of the NHS and to meet the needs of patients in Scotland.