Commons Sense
Public sector workers’ wages, in real terms, have fallen thousands of pounds a year under a decade of Tory rule. Trade unions, the Labour Party and workers have all highlighted that the average realterm pay cut has been 15 per cent. I know many of my constituents are living from pay cheque to pay cheque as a result, leaving half a million children of public sector workers nationally in poverty.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that without a pay rise, the public sector will “struggle to recruit and retain the workers it needs to deliver public services, and the quality of those services will therefore be at risk”. Research from the Institute for Public Policy Research shows that lifting the pay cap would bring higher tax receipts and lower welfare payments. New analysis by the Labour Party further reveals that Chancellor Rishi Sunak will hit every key worker earning over £18,000 in England with a real-terms pay cut next year.
At the Spending Review in November, the Chancellor announced a ‘pay freeze’ for all public sector workers earning above £24,000 in 2021-22, excluding NHS workers. However, this still leaves so many who will miss out.
Taking into account inflation over the next fiscal year, that means every non-NHS public sector worker earning above £18,000 will actually get a realterms pay cut. This includes a pay cut for every police officer in England, all 501,000 teachers in English state-funded schools and over 90 per cent of the Armed Forces personnel based in England. They all worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic and were celebrated as key workers, yet this is how they’re rewarded by an incompetent Conservative Government. A genuine pay increase for public sector workers in our constituency and across the country is both fair, affordable and is what they deser ve.
I have consistently called for the cap to be ended across the whole public sector, rather than playing one group of workers off against another. But even if the pay cap was genuinely lifted, it would not make up for the loss of thousands of pounds in the past, which I think is a very important point. After a global pandemic and recession, where we have relied on public sector workers more than ever, Government must do the right thing.