Earlier today the Earl of St Ives u/Sephronar released a press article claiming that the last Rose budget froze the pay of nurses, which was quickly debunked and shown to be false by the Chancellor of the Exchequer u/NGSpy who drafted that budget, and the Labour Party Chair u/Inadorable. As the Earl’s claim has already been debunked, this press article will instead be exploring C!’s commitment to ensuring fair pay for nurses.

The Earl of St Ives serves as a junior minister within the Scottish government - he is the Cabinet Minister for Culture to be precise. I mention this as because of his and his party leader’s (who also serves as Cabinet Secretary for Justice within the Scottish government) calls for the upcoming Rose II Budget to increase the pay of nurses, one would reasonably assume that in regard to the pay of nurses, the policy of the Scottish government would be to commit to above inflation pay rises for nurses. After all, Coalition! holds the post of Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Economy within the Scottish government and when they enter power, political parties are expected to carry out the policies they have campaigned for - so given Coalition!’s campaigns about the pay of nurses, it would be very reasonable to assume that they plan to use their powers in Scotland to implement their campaigning. This assumption, however, is very, very wrong - in fact almost the exact opposite of this assumption is the actual truth.

Under the terms of the National Health Service (Salaries) (Scotland) Act 2018 passed by the Scottish Greens, in each budget the Scottish government is mandated to give a pay rise to all NHS staff, including nurses, of either 2% or the Retail Price Index measure of inflation, whichever is higher. The Finance and Economy section of the Scottish government’s programme for government, however, promised that the government will “Repeal legislation which mandates different pay rises for certain public sector jobs to allow for this and future governments to take into account the economic conditions of the time when deciding public sector pay rises”, meaning that this Act mandating automatic pay rises for nurses will be repealed by the government. In a recent session of Portfolio Questions, C!’s Finance Secretary refused to rule out a real terms pay cut for nurses: when quizzed by former SNP leader u/chainchompsky1 about whether the Scottish government’s budget would institute a real terms pay cut for NHS staff, u/Tommy2Boys refused to answer and simply stated that “Decisions about NHS pay will be taken closer to the publication of the budget.”

The Earl of St Ives has been campaigning for the pay of nurses to be boosted by “between 5 and 10% per year, year or year, over inflation”, which is the almost exact opposite of what the government he supports and serves in has promised. If he and u/TomBarnaby truly cared about the pay of nurses, then they should be arguing within the Scottish government cabinet for the government to drop these disastrous policies and they should be pushing their own party’s finance secretary to commit to a real terms pay rise for nurses of 5-10% above inflation; or to show to us that they are committed to standing up for fair pay for nurses, they should resign from the Scottish cabinet and oppose its stance on the pay of nurses.

However, I do not believe that either of these will happen as the real reason for the Culture Minister’s campaign isn’t due to concerns about the pay of nurses. Instead there is a much better explanation: politics. The Earl of St Ives simply thought that this campaign would be a good way to score political points and to make themselves feel nice within the press.

Rose and the Labour Party, however, has shown that we are a party of using the tools of government to implement the policies we have campaigned for: under the terms of the Rose I budget and Rose’s hikes to the minimum wage, the lowest paid healthcare staff received a pay rise of 44% while the best paid received a pay rise of around 10% as this government values the hard work and dedication of NHS staff to caring for their patients and saving lives every day. In contrast, the Earl of St Ives has called for a pay rise of only 10% at the most! And unlike C!’s budget in Scotland, our upcoming budget in Westminster will continue to ensure fair pay for nurses and NHS staff.