To ask the Minister of Health whether he will consider placing a guarantee of fair pay for health service workers into forthcoming Safe and Effective Staffing legislation, compelling pay rises to take place at the start of the financial year.

The proposals set out in the Safe and Effective Staffing consultation outline plans to introduce a range of statutory duties relating to staffing matters. These include workforce planning, the use of common staffing methods and tools, and monitoring and reporting arrangements.

I do not consider the proposed legislation to be the appropriate vehicle to set out pay uplifts and their timescales.

We continue to operate on the basis of single year budgets, under which the Department’s financial outlook to be considered; it remains the case that opening budgets are insufficient to meet the cost of maintaining core services and meeting pay pressures. Discussions with the Executive around funding for any pay award and securing funding through monitoring rounds are major factors which determine when pay uplifts can take place. This means it would not be practicable to legally compel pay rises to take place at the start of the financial year.