Readers Letters: Sturgeon playing politics with NHS bonus

Nicola Sturgeon says all Scottish NHS workers will get a £500 Covid bonus

No-one is going to begrudge NHS and care staff their £500 bonus. They actually deserve a lot more. Indeed, you could say it was a derisory amount for the risks that people have had to endure in 2020, and for all the things that they will have had to see that they will hopefully never have to see again.

But what is First Minister Nicola Sturgeon up to? After she made her announcement, she asked the UK Westminster Government to ensure the £500 comes tax-free, despite the Scottish Government having full control of income tax. It is they who would be getting the money. It is not legal to simply waive income in the way that Ms Sturgeon is implying, so there is a political game being played here with NHS and care staff. Ms Sturgeon wants credit for giving them the money now, and she wants an argument over why the tax cannot be waived after the end of the current tax year, just in time for the election. Is this clever politics that we should applaud, or is it using NHS and care staff as a political football? Is the argument as important as the money in people’s pockets?

There are times when you can be too clever. If Ms Sturgeon wanted to do something that was in her power to do, she should have reduced all our taxes by £500 and recognised the effort everyone has put in this year, from shop workers and council staff, to farmers and delivery drivers. She has the money to do it because the UK Government have given it to her. NHS and care home staff would not have begrudged others getting £500 as well, not least because their wider families would benefit from it too, and the £500 would get multiplied and go much further and be more meaningful.

Victor Clements, Aberfeldy, Perthshire

Buying votes

Nobody would deny that those health and social workers who faced and are facing this terrible pandemic deserve our gratitude. It may even be fitting to give them a £500 bonus. However, for the First Minister to extend this gratuity to all NHS and Social Services staff beggars belief.

This will mean that the orthopaedic staff who ceased, through no fault of their own, to replace hips and knees to people in agony, GPs and their office support staff who saw their visitations fall off a cliff, Accident and Emergency teams whose custom was down 40 per cent and dentists who offered no treatment at all for three months will be included. What about the oncology departments? We know people were dying of cancer because they weren't being referred. Will this largesse extend to the managers in the NHS, including those, who to make beds available, sent Covid-positive cases back to care homes to spread the virus to our most vulnerable. Will it also reward those in management who failed miserably to supply PPE?

This government has form for such generosity. It sends unwanted baby boxes to the wealthy and gives them free prescriptions. It also insists that we pay for the university education of their children. It is lazy thinking by a tired government. The final insult was the demand to Westminster that these cash sums should be tax free. This from a government which taxes our doctors and senior health workers more than anywhere else in the UK.

I would like to know what percentage of NHS and social work staff actually came face to face with a covid patient and what is the government's justification for extending the reward to the others. I thought the days of buying votes belonged in the past.

Howard Lewis, Hailes Avenue, Edinburgh

Cash for all

The bonus to the health and care staff will be welcomed and is deserved. However will the First Minister now reward the equally deserving private sector personnel who have lost their livelihoods due to her direct actions.

Iain Beattie, Palmerston Road, Edinburgh

Over to Boris

The tale of two governments was evident in Nicola Sturgeon’s speech to SNP Conference. Last week Rishi Sunak’s spending review “rewarded” public sector workers for their effort on behalf of the country during the Covid crisis... a pay freeze. There were exemptions for those earning less than £24,000, they will be guaranteed a pay rise, and NHS doctors and nurses are still expected to receive a pay increase in 2021.

Contrast that with the announcement by Nicola Sturgeon at her party conference that the ongoing pay negotiations will continue, but in the meantime, in recognition of the huge effort of frontline workers in our NHS and care staff, the Scottish Government is making a one-off £500 payment to each worker.

But there was a caveat wrapped up in this announcement, a caveat to the UK Prime Minister not to tax this one-off payment to those dedicated workers Over to you Prime Minister!

Catriona C Clark, Hawthorn Drive, Banknock, Falkirk

Cynical approach