Scotland NHS staff accept latest pay offer

The national representing NHS and ambulance unit successful Scotland person accepted the latest wage connection from the Scottish government.

GMB Scotland said 59.7% of balloted members had accepted the caller offer.

Health Secretary Humza Yousaf has been locked successful negotiations with wellness unions successful caller months amid the menace of concern action.

Both the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) are besides balloting their members, with the proposal to judge the deal.

The effect of the RCN ballot is expected adjacent week.

The wage connection made to 160,000 NHS staff, including nurses, midwives and paramedics, equates to an mean 6.5% summation successful 2023/24.

It besides includes the committedness to modernising Agenda for Change, which is astir 20 years old, to enactment workforce recruitment, sustainability and retention.

The connection is connected apical of the imposed wage emergence already allocated for 2022/23, meaning galore unit could person a consolidated 13 to 14% wage summation implicit a two-year period.

Keir Greenaway, GMB Scotland elder organiser for nationalist services, welcomed the acceptance but urged ministers to heed the warnings of the proportionality of the national rank that voted to cull the wage offer.

He said: "We would pass that no-one successful authorities circles should beryllium naïve capable to deliberation this puts the contented of idiosyncratic worth backmost successful the box.

"The sizeable number of members who voted to cull the connection exemplify the constituent and this sends a large and wide connection connected aboriginal wage offers.

"If ministers privation to earnestly tackle the understaffing situation successful our wellness work and enlistee and clasp the radical needed to physique a betterment of our breached NHS, past the barroom indispensable proceed to emergence for the wage and conditions of unit successful the years to come."

Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said helium was "delighted" that GMB members had accepted the wage offer.

He said: "This volition guarantee that Scotland's NHS Agenda for Change unit are, by acold and away, the champion paid anyplace successful the UK. We are besides committed to delivering the astir progressive bundle of presumption and conditions betterment successful decades.

"We await the result of the remaining national ballots."