INFLATION-BUSTING pay rises for senior health-service managers in Scotland have been branded "obscene" at a time when other NHS staff groups face much lower wage settlements.
The Scottish Government is to relax its pay freeze for all NHS executives and senior managers earning more than £43,000 next year with a performance-related award of up to 4%.
The move was revealed by The Herald last month, but the full details of the pay packages have only now been made public.
Managers on £100,000 a year could be in line for an annual salary boost of £4000.
The scale of the rise contrasts with the 1% rise pencilled in for 2014 for all other NHS staff, including nurses, doctors and many other grades of health worker.
But the decision to hand out a higher award to managers was criticised yesterday by the Scotland Patients Association (SPA) and opposition politicians who said the increase was "hard to justify."
Margaret Watt, chairperson of the SPA, said: "This is obscene and absolutely shocking. This should not be happening at a time when many other key health workers are being restricted to 1% after many years of a pay freeze.
"These people are already on higher salaries than many of their colleagues and so there is no justification for them to be given more. If anything they should be taking less.
"This government needs to have a rethink about this, rather than enriching the fat cats."
The decision to raise executive salaries is understood to have been taken after senior NHS managers - some of whom earn up to £173,000 a year - expressed unhappiness at the pay freeze imposed in recent years as part of the UK Government's austerity measures.
Finance Secretary John Swinney has largely followed the UK-led policy of freezing the salaries of top and middle-income earners while sanctioning modest rises for lower-paid staff.
But at a conference last month, Health Secretary Alex Neil hinted at a U-turn when he said he was aware of "the concerns that now exist following several years of pay restraint."
Of the new policy, he said: "This settlement will be better than in recent years, but I accept that questions will remain about whether the management pay arrangements introduced by the previous administration continue to be fit for purpose."
Scottish Labour's health spokesman, Neil Findlay, said patients and staff on low pay "will find it unbelievable that senior managers already on hefty salaries could get a 4% performance-related pay award when complaints about the NHS are up, bed numbers are down, targets are being missed, IT systems are failing and patients are being treated in cupboards."
Liberal Democrat MSP Jim Hume said: "The potential to give already well-paid managers in the NHS a generous pay increase of up to 4% seems hard to justify, especially when the pay increase for nurses is capped. This will do little for the morale of front-line staff and does nothing to encourage new people into the NHS."
A Scottish Government spokesman defended the rises, saying: "Unlike other NHS staff groups, senior managers had their pay completely frozen in recent years, including for pay progression. It is important to note that automatic increments for doctors, nurses and other clinical staff are 3.5% to 4%, hence the total increase for any manager will not exceed that."
The dispute follows reports that a rise of 1% for NHS staff in England faces being cancelled after Department of Health officials told the health service's pay review body that the increase was now "unaffordable" alongside a system that also awards annual pay increments.
However, Mr Neil said he had "no intention" of withholding the rise in Scotland.
The Scottish Government had made its own proposals to the pay review bodies, proposing that the 1% rise be implemented in 2014/15 as well as giving further help to those on low wages by ensuring no-one employed by the health service earns less than the Scottish Living Wage.
The Health Secretary accused his Westminster counterpart, Jeremy Hunt, of "bad faith" and a "betrayal of the NHS".
"To steal the pay rise back from workers' hands will destabilise the NHS across the UK and damage morale," he said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article