Now put your money where your mouth is
PM FACING CALLS TO AXE 1% PUBLIC SECTOR PAY CAP
PRESSURE is mounting on out-oftouch Theresa May to pay more than lip service to public sector staff including those she praised for their work in recent national tragedies.
The Prime Minister faced a growing clamour even within her own Cabinet to lift the miserable 1% cap on pay rises for overstretched medics, police and other frontline workers suffering a realterms drop in income.
Boris Johnson became the latest top Tory to back Labour’s plan to end the cap for those whose courage and dedication came to the fore during the terror attacks in Manchester and London and in the Grenfell Tower inferno. A Government source said: “The Foreign Secretary supports the idea of public sector workers getting a better pay deal.”
He joins a growing Tory revolt against austerity since Jeremy Corbyn’s stunning election result that forced Mrs May into a £1billion DUP deal to stay in power.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon have already suggested the cap should be lifted.
But the PM yesterday refused to budge on the 1% offered to NHS and armed forces personnel.
Asked if the pay deal could change, Mrs May’s spokesman said: “No.”
“These were the recommendations that were made for 2017/18 and we’ve accepted them.”
The refusal came despite Mrs May having lavished praise on emergency workers who helped save lives in the tragedies in London and Manchester.
Grenfell Tower survivor Amina Mohamed, 46, who escaped the eighth floor of the blazing building with her nephew, joined the call for a fair deal.
She said: “After everything they have done, of course they should get more. It’s an insult. You can’t praise them one minute and then give them 1% the next.” Pay deals are agreed for different parts of the public sector at different stages through the year. The deal on NHS and military pay has already been agreed for the current financial year. But ministers have left the door open
You can’t praise them one minute then insult them with 1% the next AMINA MOHAMED GRENFELL FIRE SURVIVOR
to a better rise for those public sector workers – including teachers, civil servants and the police – whose deals have yet to be agreed for 2017/18.
Police Minister Nick Hurd told MPs yesterday: “We want to make sure that frontline public service workers including the police are paid fairly for their work. How we do that in a way that is sustainable and affordable is under active discussion.”
Mrs May’s spokesman said ministers wait for the recommendations of independent pay advisers before making a decision for each sector. He said: “Recommendations come forward at different times of year and the Government responds to them.”
But teachers’ unions said this was “disingenuous” as the pay review bodies are guided by Government policy, and have been recommending 1% pay hikes each year due to the Tories’ long-standing pay cap. The UK economy is now nearly 10% larger than in 2008. Yet in 2014 wages were almost 10% lower than seven years before, it was reported yesterday.
Nurses are paid 14% less than they were in 2010 – meaning they are £3,000-a-year worse off in real terms. No10 sources last week said they had “heard the message of the election” and indicated the pay cap could be lifted at the next Budget.
But after fury from Chancellor Philip Hammond Mrs May’s spokesman said “nothing has changed” on Government policy.
Former Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont said “austerity is not a choice”.
But Lib Dem Sir Vince Cable said: “Those who keep our vital public services running deserve a longoverdue rise. If the Government can find billions for corporation tax cuts, it is time they found a little extra for those working so hard.”
THERESA May’s inability to grasp the growing anger at her refusal to give public servants a decent wage rise is the tin-eared response of a beleaguered Tory leader losing her grip on reality.
The Prime Minister cuts a marooned figure as her terrified party and Cabinet scramble to disown a pay cap they’d have happily imposed for another five years had voters not denied them a Parliamentary majority.
Britain needs a pay rise and the longer she keeps the discredited cap clamped on earnings the more May proves why she and her party are being pushed towards the exit door.
Two years of wage freezes and then five of the 1% cap is a living standards-destroying austerity that is utterly indefensible when Tory MPs are exempt themselves from the squeeze.
Give our heroes the increases they deserve, Mrs May, or pay the price. Enough is enough.