Unequal pay in the NHS leaves women with nothing but a £280+million IOU from Nicola Sturgeon

Aneurin Bevan

Almost 3 years ago, Nicola Sturgeon was Scotland's government minister for, amongst other things, the NHS and for equalities.

At the time Nicola was explaining to the parliamentary Equal Opportunities Committee why women in Scotland's NHS would have to wait just a bit longer before their pay packets would find the same amount in them as the men working alongside them and doing the same or similar work.  In October 2009, Nicola [who appears to harbour serious delusions in encouraging those around her to make positive and complimentary comparisons between her and Aneurin Bevan] responded to a question from the Committee :

'It was indicated [at a previous Committee round-table discussion on equal pay reviews] that advice had been given to NHS boards not to perform equal pay reviews to ensure that agenda for change remains equal-pay-proofed. I want to clarify that that is not the case. There remains an issue about the extent to which such reviews can be carried out while agenda for change reviews are under way, but there is a clear expectation that all boards will get on and complete those reviews as quickly as they can, and that they will go beyond the letter of the law to ensure that they are exemplary employers that live up to all the duties required of them.' [6^th October 2009]

In recent months I have conducted research across all of Scotland's councils and health boards to clarify just what the equal pay gap is in Scotland's public sector currently.

Three years on from that very clear and unequivocal assurance given by Nicola Sturgeon to the Scottish Parliament, I have found that across the NHS in Scotland’s 22 Boards, just 2 [9.09%] of the Boards were able to provide data on the gender pay gap. This shows a gender pay gap of either 4.3% at NHS 24 or 12.9% at the NHS State Hospital. This means that just 1 Scottish NHS Board has a gender pay gap which comes within the 5% criteria set by the EHRC.

Remember what she said :

there is a clear expectation that all boards will get on and complete those reviews as quickly as they can, and that they will go beyond the letter of the law to ensure that they are exemplary employers that live up to all the duties required of them

One can but conclude that she was either misleading the Committee - and the citizens of Scotland - or she was not really able to make the 22 NHS Boards do her bidding.  Any other scenarios warmly welcomed, and I promise to publish the best ones.

Nicola Sturgeon - on the right

It is sad.  Making equal pay a reality for the 140,000+ women and men working in our NHS would have been a significant footnote to Nicola Sturgeon's term in office as Cabinet Secretary for Health.  Instead her monster of a footnote on leaving that office will be that she abandoned over 109,000+ women working in the NHS with pay systems which have still not been subject to an equal pay audit.

It is more than just the absence of equal pay audits.  The whole idea of equal pay legislation has been to put into the pay packets of women the money which has been systematically stolen from them for decades.  The scale of the theft involved is far from the proverbial peanuts.

If one uses data provided by the Office for National Statistics, this shows that the average weekly earnings across the UK are £539 a week.  In Scotland the figure [at April 2011]  was £517.50, for men.  For women in Scotland, the government reckons that the equal pay gap in 2011, based on average earnings, was 10.7%.

This translates to a difference, a pay theft, of £55.37 per week.  Apply that differential to the 109,000 women left behind by Nicola Sturgeon.  The 109,000 women whose pay systems have not been subject to equal pay audits.  The 109,000+ women in the NHS whose employers have certainly not evidenced getting near the letter of the law, never mind going beyond it.

109,000 women, each due on average £55.37 a week, roughly.  Let's make it easy.  Let's call it £50 a week.  For each woman, that would mean equal pay would give her an additional £2,600 a year in her pay packet.  Imagine the difference that would make to women, right now, in the middle of a massive recession.  Then times all of that by at least 109,000.  In any one year, using 2011 earnings data, women working in Scotland's NHS are having their earnings ripped off to the tune £283,400,000 a year.  

If my arithmetical dexterity strikes you as somewhat dodgy and reads more like the voodoo economics used way back by Ronald Reagan and now revived by George Osborne and John Swinney, you might want to check out a 2011 report published by the EHRC on equal pay.  Their arithmetic offers this illustration of the thievery going on : 

In a woman’s working career from age 18-59 it is estimated that she would lose approximately £361,000 in gross earnings compared to an equivalent male.

Using that indicator, the scale of theft visited on the women working in our NHS would amount to £39,349,000,000.

History tells us that Nye Bevan, the government minister with responsibility for the creation of the NHS, resigned in 1951 from government when the then Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell announced the introduction of prescription charges.  History will show that Nicola Sturgeon left her post as Cabinet Secretary for Health in Scotland knowing full well that over 109,000 women workers in the NHS were being cheated out of equal pay to the tune of over £280 million a year.