Kenneth Roy
Still we are being misled

There have been remarkable developments this morning in the campaign, initiated by the Scottish Review, for greater fairness and transparency in Scottish public life, particularly on the question of the over-generous salaries being paid by the NHS to its senior managers. After months when it seemed our campaign was getting nowhere, suddenly it is the pre-Christmas political roast potato. The leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, Tavish Scott, and the cabinet secretary for finance, John Swinney, must take most of the credit, Mr Scott for proposing a pay curb at the top, Mr Swinney for being open to the idea. But today they are being backed where it counts – at the most senior level of the NHS in Scotland.
     The Herald leads its front page with health correspondent Helen Puttick's interview with the director of public health for Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Dr Linda de Caestecker, who says that society would benefit if the medical profession was paid less. She goes on to suggest that all doctors, including herself, should consider a reduction in salary and stop demanding significant pay increases every year. Helen Puttick says that Dr de Caestecker bases her argument on the belief that pay inequality needs to change to address some of Scotland's current health problems. Asked if she would be willing to sacrifice some of her own income, she replies: 'I suppose the simple answer is yes, if it was done in a fair and transparent way and was about redistributing income across the pay scales between the well-off and less well-off.'
     As it happens, Linda de Caestecker on £142,000 a year, helping to run the largest health board in Europe, is not one of the extreme cases highlighted in the Scottish Review's recent surveys. She earns £8,000 a year less than the mere director of finance at NHS Lothian until his recent retirement; £98,000 a year less than the medical director of the very much smaller NHS Ayrshire and Arran; and, for heaven's sake, £38,000 less than the top earner at NHS Shetland, repeat Shetland. Early in our investigation, we described NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde as a model of pay restraint compared with most others. It now appears also to be a model of social responsibility. We hope that Linda de Caestecker has set an example to her colleagues elsewhere in the NHS and that her ideas on the redistribution of income will form part of the urgent review by the Scottish Government which SR proposed yesterday.

It is encouraging that both our quality daily newspapers are carrying leaders on the subject this morning.
     The Scotsman agrees with SR's conclusion that 'the problem is less with top public sector pay in general but the extraordinary dominance of this list [SR's] by NHS chiefs...The objection is not, and should not be, to do with high pay per se. Senior posts carry responsibilities and the workload that goes with them. Rather it is to ensure, first, that top salaries in NHS Scotland are fully disclosed; second, that any additional bonuses are linked to verifiable, exceptional performance; and third, that they have regard to economic conditions and what the NHS budget can afford. It is troubling that, on the evidence so far, huge pay rises were still being handed out as the economy plunged. The Scottish Government has responsibility for restraint here, and should exercise it.'
     The Herald calls for a national discussion. It says that this is a debate Scotland needs to have. It calls on its own readers to join an online forum. And it is impressed – as all of us should be – by the belief of Linda de Caestecker that not only the poor but also the rich need to change if Scotland is to address its entrenched health problems; that there is now a worrying gulf between the health and wellbeing of the richest and poorest. 'There is a growing awareness,' says the Herald, 'that very unequal societies, such as the UK and the US, are socially corrosive. The chasm between the haves and the have-nots produces a preoccupation with hierarchy and material consumption and generates crime, ill-health and mistrust.'

Given the new political consciousness on this subject, and the support of the intelligent media for our persistent campaigning of the last few months, why is the Scottish Government still finding it necessary to mislead the public so outrageously?
     'Anger as NHS bosses pocket pay rises of up to £10,000' is the headline over David Maddox's news story in today's Scotsman, following up yesterday's SR disclosures. Mr Maddox correctly states that we have attacked the Scottish Government for making it harder to track high wages by removing a web page on public bodies, which included salaries, from its website days after the issue was raised in Holyrood by Tavish Scott. He asked the Scottish Government for a comment on the missing online data and this is the reply he got: 'The information on that particular section of our website was out of date. It has been replaced with a national public bodies directory, which is broader in coverage and provides links to the websites for all 161 devolved public bodies.'
     First we must ask the Scottish Government (as we have asked before, without receiving an answer): why was it out of date? Could it be because the up-to-date salaries were even higher than those stated and that the information had become too embarrassing?
     Second it is simply untrue to claim that it has been replaced by a directory broader in coverage. It is true that more organisations are listed, but the amount of information about any of them is minimal. Before 26 November, there were comprehensive details about the membership and remuneration of each body. Now there are no such details: none. The information was simply pulled as soon as SR published its league table of highest earners and Tavish Scott raised it at Holyrood.
     Third we must point out that, although we were promised by the Scottish Government on 26 November that the directory in its diminished form would soon be enhanced, there has been no movement on the site since then. It's 20 days and counting.
      Fourth it is also untrue to claim that the directory 'provides links to the websites for all 161 devolved public bodies'. There is no link to websites (or even to contact email addresses) of the 14 main culprits, the area health boards. We challenge the Scottish Government to provide such links by the end of the week, so that the public is able to discover for itself just how difficult it is to obtain information about the managerial salaries being paid by these bodies.

Finally, we are grateful to the Scotsman for supporting our repeated demands that top salaries in NHS Scotland are fully disclosed. Will John Swinney or Nicola Sturgeon – or Alex Salmond himself – give a firm undertaking that this will happen?