Scandal - Woman doing important job is well paid!

[ChocolateLemons]

To be annoyed that the front page of the guardian is an 'expose' that a woman doing an important job and working long hours is well paid.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/24/midwife-leading-nottingham-maternity-inquiry-charging-nhs-up-to-26000-a-month?trk=feed_main-feed-card_feed-article-content
Maybe I'm biased as the previous Ockendon report literally saved me and my child's life.
Yes midwives should be paid more in general. Yes NHS needs to take action on the reviews.
No - an extremely competent woman who listens to and values people's experiences, and is doing a really critical job should not be shamed for being well paid. The article is obviously scraping when they criticise her company for having an HR department 🙄 AIBU?

If it was just financial (and of course it’s not) the other side of the scale is how much were NHSE wasting through substandard care with consequences of birth injury and medical negligence. That probably doesn’t come cheap.

Her pay is line with what you’d expect for an independent advisor of her standing. The uproar comes because pay is so shit in this country and so many people on the lower end that so many people just don’t know what some work costs

But how much do men doing similar work get paid? That fairly important info is missing. If you want the best, you have to pay.

A monthly salary equivalent to what some earn in a year is obscene. I say that for any job regardless of if it was a man or a woman.
reality is that many are woefully underpaid but it’s not going to change any time soon.

Ha that’s cheaper than I was expecting.

I work for NHSE. A man working for the new hospital programme was on the phone to a recruiter a few months ago and said ‘my day rate here is £1k per day’ and let me tell you - having worked near this guy a few times he didn’t seem to know his arse from his elbow…

"Scandal - Woman doing important job is well paid! "
Exactly that, OP. Two key messages are, we value women's careers so little, we are horrified when one earns over minium wage, and Two, we value the safety/lives of pregnant women so little that any investigation should only cost 27 1/2p.

Perhaps the Guardian would like to let us know how much they think women and babies lives are actually worth?

She's absolutely ripping off the NHS and lining her greedy pockets. And yes, I'd say the same for a man. I know someone who gets NHS managers doing team building crap, and earns a fortune for basically getting them to play Squid Games Lite. It's a complete and utter waste of your money.

I wouldn't have a problem with the pay if the recommendations are taken on board by the NHS and that they actually improve the system.

If improvements are not seen in an agreed timescale - there should be some kind of refund - a percentage of the profit that has been made for example. This I would suggest should apply to all private businesses that do business with the NHS or public sector in general. Sick of the public sector being ripped off by the private sector e.g., Michelle Mone, looks like we will never see any of that money she has been ordered to pay back!

The NHS spends more on maternity negligence claims than it does on the maternity care itself. So I imagine this could be money very well spent.

(And of course that’s only looking at the financial aspect, not the more important life saving)

26k/month is insane, it doesn't matter the gender, job or hours.

She’s worth it.

Paying £26,000 a month is utterly obscene when so many newly qualified midwives don’t even earn £26,000 a year.

She’s lining her pockets at everyone else’s expense.

She’s not a newly qualified midwife and that’s just a fucking rude thing to say.

she has huge responsibility. Women’s pain and suffering is worth being taken seriously and that means paying an actual expert to unpick the horrific mess that has been allowed.

I genuinely would pay her double. Expertise costs money for a reason.

Shame on the Guardian but why am I not surprised. I wonder what their (female) editor earns 🤔

Your eyes would water if you knew how much we spent on contractors doing certain projects. Donna Ockendon is very mid range £ wise. I’d say mid to low cost actually.

That's not her salary. She is a contractor charging £850 per day.

You are dead wrong. She is doing righteous work that will really save lives. What your mate does for team building exercises is completely irrelevant.

Their editor makes around £600k annually.

Which I always find weird because as a deputy editor at another national paper I made less than £50k a year. The jump is crazy.