An investigation by Scotland on Sunday compared the salaries offered to the board members in health boards from 2007-08 to those in 2008-09, including chief executives, medical directors and directors of public health, HR, finance, nursing and performance. Health boards have just published figures for 2008-09. The best-rewarded executives in the country were at NHS Ayrshire and Arran, where the seven board members earned £1,040,000 in pay. There are also large discrepancies in the pay awards to individual boards, with Ayrshire and Arran paying its own director of public health £35,000 more than the same post in Lothian. NHS boards insisted the salaries were all paid in accordance with “national agreed pay ranges”.
This is an average rise of 6 per cent, which compares to the 2.75 per cent given to nurses. Given the reduced budget in coming years, these increses can only mean a reduction in front-line services, in fact many wards are running with reduced staffing levels. My question is; what are our political representatives doing when these increases are agreed?