Letters: Tavish Scott's NHS statistics just don't add up

Your report (29 October) does not accurately reflect the numbers of senior managers in the NHS in Scotland.

The figures published by Tavish Scott do not take into account the fact health boards categorise many front-line jobs as non-clinical. As boards count only doctors and dentists as clinical staff, this excludes nurse and midwife consultants, psychologists, pharmacists, radiologists, scientists and allied health professionals.

A more accurate measure is figures published by independent health statisticians at the Information Services Division where non-clinical numbers do not include front-line medical staff, which show there were 1,914 senior managers in the NHS in 2007 and 1,377 in 2009.

That number will fall significantly with the Scottish Government commitment to reducing the numbers of senior managers across all NHS boards by 25 per cent over the next four years. By the end of the next parliament, there will be 900, almost 1,000 fewer than in 2007.

You highlight the cost of senior managers to the NHS but ignore the fact that the wage bill is a result of a pay deal by the previous administration. Government plans to reduce the number of senior managers will release 25 million that will be invested in front-line services.

Your failure to acknowledge efforts to address the issue, or give an informed explanation of Mr Scott's misleading claims, made for a one-sided report that is a disservice to your readers.

Nicola Sturgeon

Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing

Regent Road

Edinburgh

The expression "lies, damned lies and statistics" is very apt for the story, "Cost of Scots NHS chiefs trebles in three years".

At first reading it seems a very plausible conclusion, taking at face value the figures that the cost of senior managers has almost trebled in the past three years.

The stumbling block to this conclusion is the definition of a senior manager as someone who has an annual salary exceeding 50,000, which is just an arbitrary figure.

What appears to have happened is that nationally agreed pay increases plus incremental increases have taken a relatively large number of managers across the 50,000 mark.

These people are now included in the "senior management" bracket, where before they would not have been.

The actual total cost to the NHS budget is definitely not three times as much.

I thought it would be instructive to look at what might be the conclusion of a similar exercise with police salaries.

A newly promoted police inspector in Scotland in September 2007 would have been paid 43,320 a year.Three years later, on paypoint 3, the salary would be 50,751 and the incumbent could then be re-classified as a "senior manager".

The actual increase in cost to the taxpayer was only about 17 per cent of the initial salary but the apparent increase in the "senior management" wage bill, to now include most police inspectors, would probably exceed your threefold figure.

Marjory Roy

Belford Avenue

Edinburgh