How much for a hug?

Mastercard ran a series of ads in the early noughties that became known as the “priceless” campaign.

The central tenet was to convey a feeling that while a lot of things in life cost money, some things are literally priceless.

This works neatly for Mastercard since credit cards often allow us to seize those seminal, unforgettable life moments. Take that embrace with a sibling you haven’t seen in a few years; it might have cost £2000 in transatlantic flights and assorted costs, but it has given you a moment that no money could pay for.

Thinking of this Mastercard campaign has made me think of our health care staff in the UK. A lot are on minimum wage, A lot is unskilled work…but the kindness shown is worth any amount of money

In the UK, we are midway through dealing with Covid. Covid is an expensive old crisis. There is a widespread belief in the UK that public sector pay should not be frozen, that they should be rewarded with a pay rise to reflect their efforts during Covid.

The difficulty with that is that there are 5.6 Million people employed in the public sector in the UK. Their median wage is £27,000 annually. Even a 10% pay rise would make the economists sweat and lead the treasury into pretty choppy waters — that would cost, roughly, a trillion pounds. It’s just not feasible.

If we started doing that, then it won’t be long before we’re all scrapping over the last potato in the field since the Government has long since collapsed.

What’s more, it is difficult to pick and choose one division of public service over another. It might seem fair to hand the nurses a pay rise, yes, but what of the firemen? They turned up and did their jobs too, yet the poor blokes wouldn’t get one.

It’s the problem of having such an inflated public sector. Choosing to award a pay rise is a dangerous game of precedent of one group over another

It’s high stakes poker, that’s what people don’t understand. Concede a pay rise to civil servants and the police will be after one too. And then the firemen and so and so forth, not to mention the devolved institutions.

If there were a magic money tree, you would grant all our fine public servants a raise for their sterling work in getting us through. Pandemic. However, no such tree exists. If I am mistaken, please leave its whereabouts in the comments section.

Having seen kindness up close, I can truly describe it as priceless. It is impossible to quantify in numeric terms the impact that a kind word to an elderly patient has or a balloon for a scared child.

It is a bitter pill to swallow for the public service to have their pay frozen for 3 years after all their fantastic effort to get us through Covid-19. Unfortunately, though, that’s just the reality of economics.

For now, it’s certainly easy to see the frustration among public sector workers. MPs, it has been said, are happy to legislate but not lead from the front — with their potential pay rise and expenses it is not difficult to see the point. Clapping for the Care Sector on a Thursday nice was a nice initiative, but it doesn’t pay the bills.

As a society though, we should not consider ourselves to be above innovative or creative measures to reward those who deserve it. David Cameron tried it with his Big Society initiative and other things like the Peoples’ Choice Awards are effective in inspiring good service.

I wonder is it possible to think outside the box a little. For those who go the extra mile, is it conceivable to create a community fund that awards on a discretionary basis those that are deserving? Not huge sums, maybe £100 here or there to worthy candidates.

Yes there would be fraud, yes that might lead to unhealthy competition…but it would also reward the priceless attribute of human kindness, and get the extra remuneration into the hands of those who deserve it.

Or perhaps we are thinking along the wrong lines — perhaps it is better to enhance their remuneration at the supply side. Rather than wholesale changes to the demand side economics of public service, perhaps increased tax breaks and allowances would be better.

Perhaps a government has underwritten discount on electric vehicles, or an enhanced government contribution to the Help to Buy ISA?

It’s a subtle difference, but the result is the same — more money in the back pocket for those who deserve it.