Will public pay bill soar?

THE country faces a spiralling public sector wage bill if a weakened Tory government is forced to end austerity, a former head of the civil service predicted yesterday.

Describing the Prime Minister’s authority as ‘shattered’, Lord Kerslake suggested Theresa May would have to bow to pressure to lift the 1 per cent cap on pay rises in the public sector.

It is a key policy in plans to slash the deficit and it has been estimated that removing it would land Britain with a £9.2billion annual bill by 2021/22.

But Lord Kerslake, who led the Civil Service between January 2012 and September 2014 under David Cameron, said: ‘It’s hard to see any party doing austerity now. The landscape is changing and the consensus on public sector pay will have to be revised’.