Lansley backs lower pay for NHS staff in poorer areas.

[daffodilly2]

Apparently, this decision is to bring private sector and public sector pay in line and this will supposedly boost business by making private sector jobs more desirable and private services more competitive.

My thinking is that it is more about public sector workers not being able to afford decent housing down south and so rather than lower pay in the midlands and North, more pay should be paid in the south.

Maybe, an increase in Southern regional pay will have to be afforded by other areas receiving less. Not sure.

What do you think?

It's a recycled Miliband policy, so I think it will get through Parliament with no real Opposition.

It depends on whether you see remuneration as the exact figure on your pay cheque, or how much it buys where you need to live. The latter is the version that seems to have cross-party support at present.

Most things that Lansley backs are a bad idea - so why should this one be any different. It fails to understand that there are poorer less desirable areas to work which will be unable to attract or retain quality staff if they have lower wages, even if the cost of living may be marginally less. Therefore some areas of the country will suffer disproportionally in getting quality staff or even actual cover as they cannot attract people to do the job.... but he doesn't give a stuff as those areas will be northerners who traditionally don't vote Tory so don't really count

So Lansley could adopt all the Labour ideas on public sector pay, and that in itself makes them wrong?

Interesting dynamic!

And I take it that, as the originators of the idea - and as they propounded it for benefit payment levels too - that Labour gives even less of a stuff about voters in the north?

Surely in general poorer areas = more need , so a "harder job"
generalisation I know, but does need to be factored in