Civil service unions launch pay challenge
A LEADING Tory Brexiteer has issued a new warning to Theresa May that she faces a Commons defeat if she presses ahead with her Chequers blueprint for Brexit.
Just hours after the Prime Minister appealed to the party to unite behind her plan, former Brexit minister Steve Baker, who quit over Chequers, urged her to avoid a political “accident” and rethink her approach to negotiations with Brussels. Mr Baker, a leading member of the pro-Brexit Tory European Research Group, said even if only half the 80 Conservative MPs who had indicated their opposition to the plan actually voted against it would be enough to defeat the Government.
In her closing address to the Conservative conference on Wednesday, Mrs May sought to rally her warring party with an appeal to back her proposed deal in the “national interest”.
She warned that if Tory MPs split in pursuing their “perfect Brexit” they risked ending up with “no Brexit at all”.
However, Mr Baker – who backed former foreign secretary Boris Johnson’s conference call to “chuck Chequers” – said she would face a “substantial” revolt unless she changed course.
Mr Baker has previously said there were 80 Tory MPs were prepared to vote for an amendment protesting against Chequers, which they believe keeps the UK too closely tied to the EU after Brexit.
While he acknowledged that supporting a protest motion was a different matter to voting down an actual deal, he said the Government whips would still struggle to get it through the House.
“We don’t want to have this accident. We are trying very hard to avoid these circumstances arising,” he said.
“Voting against a Chequers-based deal would be quite a high bar, I am not going to deny that.
“But what I am saying is that even if the whips did fantastically well and got the numbers down to 40 it still seems to me that it will be voted down.” CIVIL SERVICE unions have accused the Government at the High Court of reneging on a commitment to consult over new pay guidance.
The FDA, Prospect and the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) unions – representing more than 200,000 civil servants – claim the latest civil service pay remit guidance was published without “adequately consulting” them.
The guidance, published in June, limits average pay awards granted by government departments to a range of one per cent to 1.5 per cent, unless they receive specific approval from the Cabinet Office or the Treasury.
The unions took the Cabinet Office, which issued the guidance with the Treasury, to the High Court yesterday to try to quash the guidance and have it declared unlawful.