OUR much-valued NHS is rarely far from the headlines. The news that NHS Scotland pay scales will be capped at one per cent for another year is just the latest cause for concern among doctors and nurses.

This, they say, represents a cut in real terms given that only this week UK inflation rose to 2.3 per cent, its highest level since 2013.

Since 2010, public sector pay restraint has been in place across the UK. In Scotland this has meant NHS wage increases have remained capped at one per cent, while those who earn under £22,000 get a flat raise of £400 a year.

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The latest changes are to be implemented after the Scottish Government accepted the recommendations of the NHS Pay Review Body. Ministers rejected a recommendation to increase the value of distinction awards and discretionary points for senior consultants or to lift the freeze on new distinction awards.

In the case of nurses, since 2010 there has been a real-term fall in nursing pay of around 14 per cent, according to RCN associate director Norman Provan.

While doctors’ workloads are increasing like never before, health unions says these repeated years of real-terms cuts have taken a substantial toll on incomes and seriously undermined morale within the profession.

They point to problems in recruitment and warn that consultant vacancies in the health service will worsen unless salaries improve. Around seven per cent of consultant posts in Scotland are unfilled. NHS statistics released recently showed 377 consultant posts were vacant, with almost half of these positions having been unfilled for at least six months.

To be fair, part of this problem with vacancies arises because many are in remote rural locations rather than simply because pay is poor. That said, pay does remain a significant factor and quite rightly a cause for concern. The kind of message these latest wage rates send out to the consultant workforce can only be negative.

As Simon Barker, chairman of BMA Scotland’s consultants’ committee, points out: “We will never recruit and retain the specialists our health service needs if we fail to recognise and reward their efforts.”

This negative message will only make worse an already precarious situation by encouraging even more doctors and nurses to work “freelance” as locums and agency staff where they can end up earning a lot more than they do as permanent staff.

This in turn only exacerbates vacancies and pushes up costs for the NHS when it has to hire locums and agency staff to fill posts. This latest pay announcements must also seem very much at odds with Health Secretary Shona Robison’s assertion that NHS employees are the service’s “most valuable asset” whose contribution is “valued enormously”.

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Ms Robison does, however, point out these latest pay scales must be seen in the context of the significant cuts to Scotland’s budget in recent years. And while this financial pain is being felt across a much wider area than just the NHS, that will be of little consolation to those doctors and nurses whose frustration and anger is entirely understandable.