Nurses and midwives in Scotland will see their wages increase from next month as unions have agreed to the government’s pay offer.
The deal will see pay rises for NHS Agenda for Change staff of 4.25% in 2025-26 and 3.75% in 2026-27, equating to 8% over the two-year period.
“We want to ensure they feel valued and rewarded”
Neil Gray
It also includes an “inflation guarantee” that will ensure the pay increase each year will be at least one percentage point above Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation.
Unions have been balloting their members on the offer since it was put forward in April and, on Friday last week, they informed the government that they would accept the deal.
The Scottish Government has now confirmed that the deal will be implemented, backdated to 1 April 2025 and will begin hitting pay packets from June.
Health secretary Neil Gray said: “I welcome the fact that union members have accepted this pay offer.
“Delivering a renewed and stronger NHS is a key commitment for us and at the heart of that are our hard-working healthcare staff.
“We want to ensure they feel [valued] and rewarded and I’m very pleased that they have agreed to accept a strong two-year pay deal.”
He said the deal would ensure nurses, midwives and other NHS staff in Scotland had the “best reward package in the UK”.
Unions in Scotland welcomed the deal but said there was still work to do to fix workforce problems in the country’s NHS.
The deal comes as Agenda for Change staff in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are still waiting for their pay deal for 2025-26.
The governments in those countries are using the NHS Pay Review Body to decide a deal, whereas the Scottish Government opted to negotiate directly with unions.
Speaking last week after her members voted to accept the deal, Jaki Lambert, director for Scotland at the Royal College of Midwives, said: “Unfortunately, colleagues in the rest of the UK remain once again in limbo over their pay awards for this year, so in a way we are relived that our members in Scotland will see their pay increases sooner rather than later.”
