So health conference is over for another year and we're on our way home to begin preparation for the members' ballot on pay. The afternoon debates today, on nursing students' poverty, mental health, partnership and a host of other issues, moved pretty quickly and the conference completed all the business a little early.

At lunchtime the SGE met briefly to discuss the mechanics of the pay ballot and we agreed that the chair of the SGE would have approval over the materials which were to be sent out with the ballot paper but that all members of the SGE would be sent drafts to review. Clearly there is a balance to be struck between ensuring democratic oversight of the ballot process by the elected leadership and getting the ballot started quickly, which we all clearly want.

With all the focus on the pay debate yesterday it would be easy to forget that other important issues are also on the agenda here.

Yesterday we agreed motions pledging to raise the profile of the Knowledge and Skills Framework and extend the benefits of training and support to those members working for private contractors. We also agreed to fight against both unsafe staffing levels and down grading like that currently hanging over the heads of our members in Derby hospitals.

Two motions were passed on the conduct of last year's pay ballot. Although the SGE asked them not to, delegates agreed to motions from Yorkshire Ambulance Branch and the Eastern Region which declared that "in general branches should always have the right to inform members of their own policy on all issues" and that "the health national officers should not have intervened [by telling branches they could not make local recommendations] as it changed the interpretation of the democracy guidelines applied to branches in the health sector".

For the SGE position: 214,059
Against the SGE: 201,101

Majority in favour: 12,958

Therefore the other emergency motions fall.

Analysis later.

After something of a false start, the debate on NHS pay at Unison health conference has ended with a card vote. So we still don't know what our policy is!

The first four speakers taken from the floor were either in favour of the SGE motions or against the motions from Manchester and Scotland. Delegates challenged the balance of the debate, and the vice-president, quite rightly, suspended the debate while the order of speakers was changed to give a balance between the three positions.

When the debate re-started, 18 (I think) further speakers contributed. On the whole it was a positive debate. Everyone agreed that the membership of our union should be able to decide what to do in response to the pay offer, and no-one seemed to think the offer was good enough. The disagreements were ones of tactics. But tactics are important.

Problems connecting to this site couldn't have come at a worse time than last night, so of course that's when it happened. I wasn't able to post anything from last night's excellent fringe meeting in support of the campaign to win Karen Reissmann's reinstatement.

And I wasn't able to provide an update on the latest situation with the pay debate. Apparently the Standing orders Committee met yesterday afternoon and ruled out of order the motion from the SGE which sought to facilitate the conference making a recommendation in a consultative ballot. Whether there were problems with the wording of the motion or not, the motion clearly sought to acheive the will of both the SGE and the conference. Refusing to allow it on the agenda leaves the SGE putting a motion which does not represent our position at all - since it would result in the ballot going out with no recommendation.

While UNISON health delegates ponder their decision on the three year pay offer from health workers, the new issue of the Nursing Times is published today with details of their online survey.

It shows that 71% of the 2400 people who took part don't want this deal.

Obviously this is just a quick snapshot but given that band 5 nurses are amongst the groups who stand to do the best, it is indicative that healthworkers do recognise a pay cut when they see one.

So the lunchtime SGE meeting, which was supposed to be a quick five minutes to take vote on the pay offer, managed to fill the entire lunchbreak.
We firstly voted on whether we wanted there to be a recommendatiom given to members, and there was an overwhelming majority in favour of making a recommendation.

However, when we took a named vote on whether that recommendation should be for acceptance or rejection of the pay offer the vote was tied at 19-19. As one of the officers commented this put us in something of a constitutional crisis. I suggested that the SGE put both accept and reject positions to the conference and allow conference to decide. This seemed to me to be better than the officers' suggestion of putting a motion which makes no recommendation at all.

The first session of the unison health conference has agreed to organise activities to defend the NHS from privatisation throughout this, its 60th year. We have also agreed to campaign against marketisation in primary care, and to respond assertively to the Darzi Report.

Some very good speches from branch delegates with experience of fighting outsourcing of admin and clerical jobs demonstrate that on the ground union reps are having some significant success in this area.

Motions 1 to 7 have all been passed, together with the relevant amendments, except for motion 4 which fell because no regional delegate from the Northern region was available to move it.

Unison health conference gets underway tomorrow morning. So we're here in Manchester - yes, it's raining - preparing for a hugely important pay debate which will take place on Tuesday.

Today we had a meeting of the Service Group Executive. Although the meeting was scheduled for ninety minutes we actually spent three and a half hours in discussions, almost all of that time devoted to the proposed three year deal.

Mike Jackson presented the proposals, and presented the officers' view that we should recommend members accept the three year deal. In the debate which followed I read out some of the emails I'd received from members in the East Midlands - almost all of whom thought we should reject the proposal. I also argued the government's threats of reducing or staging the PRB recommendation amounted to bullying behaviour and that therefore we should stand up to them. Crucially I said that we had a duty to give a lead to the rest of the union. I criticised the argument that our members "lacked the bottle" for a strike, saying that the crucial question was whether we, the SGE, had the nerve to lead a fight. We had a duty as the elected leadership to give a lead. While there were no guarantees of victory if we rejected the offer I thought that some SGE members were being too pessimistic. Without a fight then we were condemning ourselves to a three year pay cut.

UNISON's Service Group Executive elections start this week, with voting up until May 16th. In the East Midlands I am standing (again) for the General Seat, and giving my support to Sharon Vasselin from Nottingham University Hospitals UNISON Branch for the Female Seat.

We've done a joint election leaflet and this is it. If you are a UNISON member working in the health service in the East Midlands, please vote for us.