MANY aspects of public life seem baffling, even irritating, to the man or woman in the street. They try to understand them. They fail. Meanwhile, the authorities enacting these peculiar decisions act as if they were strokes of genius that are difficult to explain – until pressed to do so by watchdogs.
Take the decision to pay erring NHS Tayside chief executive Lesley McLay £32,105 more then she was contractually entitled to in her pay-off. NHS Scotland chief executive Paul Gray will have left many people spluttering when he declared this “reasonable” and that it “represented good value for money”.
What possible reason could he have for saying something so ostensibly bizarre? Well, his partially plausible explanation is that the pay-off represented less than the estimated costs of a potential legal battle over unfair dismissal. Less easy to explain was the sum being made up from Ms McLay’s notice period having doubled from three to six months.
NHS Tayside believed this was required to bring parity with other chief executives across the NHS. However, Audit Scotland pointedly described this as “not correct”. Indeed, the public spending watchdog found that three months was the contractual notice period on seven NHS boards, making this odd attempt at egalitarianism of the elite entirely unmerited.
In terms of public spending, £32,000 is a small sum, but it’s the principle that matters, and principles don’t shrink to fit pay-offs. Apart from which, NHS Tayside also mistakenly paid Ms McLay £19,135 in pension contributions.
These extras are more than many people earn in a year – some of them in the NHS – and, when most news about the NHS concerns the struggle for adequate resources, it’s not a good look to be making such handsome payments, particularly to someone who had to go after botching the use of funds. To the man or woman in the street, this whole business must remain utterly baffling.
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel