Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:36 pm on 23 November 2016.
Last month, the City and County of Swansea council settled a claim brought by 11 of its occupational therapists that they were being paid less than their equivalents in the NHS. Unison said that occupational therapists right across Welsh local government, not only in Swansea, suffer lower pay and poorer access to professional development opportunities than their colleagues in the health service. I’m sure you agree with the point of equal pay for equal work, but have you discussed with local authorities whether they would be expected to meet any extra costs of similar claims from their own Welsh budget allocation, or bearing in mind that we’re talking about providers of health services, whether there’s an argument that they might actually go to the health budget in order to help them meet those costs?