Deviating from salary review recommendations will be politically difficult for Rishi Sunak. Credit: Paul Ellis/Pool/AFP
Rishi Sunak will do it Thursday he will be presented with plans to raise the wages of a million public sector workers by about six percent as he juggles avoiding more strikes and halving inflation with his promise.
The Prime Minister and Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor, meet to make a final decision on the recommendations of each of the public sector pay authorities.
The salaries of public sector teachers, medical consultants, junior doctors, prison service workers, police and military personnel are expected to be announced on Thursday. it is expected to be around six percent for 2023/24, well above the 3.5 percent first proposed by the Treasury. This means an additional £3bn in public spending.
It is recommended to increase salaries by 6.5% for teachers and 6% for health consultants.
Mr. Hunt refused to cover any additional increase with additional borrowing, arguing that it could spur inflation. This means ministries have struggled to find austerity funds in their budgets.
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Downing Street and Treasury insiders said on Wednesday evening that no final decision had yet been made and Mr. Sunak hasn't made a decision yet. after returning from the NATO summit on Wednesday.
It is quite possible that he could agree to accept the salary review recommendations across the board, accept some and reject others, or agree to lower increases across the board. Expectations were rising in Whitehall on Wednesday that many of the recommendations would be adopted.
To oppose wage revision recommendations will be politically difficult for Mr. Sunak, given that he has repeatedly defended the process of countering the demands of striking workers. .
Treasury economists have concluded that a 6% pay rise will not cause inflation if it is financed from existing departmental budgets rather than new borrowing.
Mr Sunak said the halving of inflation in this year is his number one priority, but this has become more of a challenge as high prices proved to be more sustainable than forecast.
At the same time, hospital leaders have warned that the doctors' strikes are all but depriving the NHS of its ability to close the Covid backlog.
As young doctors begin the longest strike in healthcare history on Thursday, hospital leaders said the chaos of recurring strikes deadly. undermining their efforts to reduce waiting lists.
They also suggested that Mr. Sunak had little chance of delivering on his key promise to reduce waiting times if the situation continued into the fall.
A five-day strike by junior doctors will be followed by a two-day strike next Thursday. an afternoon strike of consultants and a 48-hour strike of radiologists in about a fifth of the trusts on July 25.
Massive teacher strikes loom in the fall semester. On Wednesday, the NASUWT teachers' union announced that it had received a strike mandate in a wage dispute.
The NEU, the NAHT School Leaders Union and the School and College Leaders Association are also voting for their members in England on the strike, and their votes will end at the end of this month.
Mr. Sunak said on Wednesday he will balance “fairness” and “responsibility” in deciding how to approach public sector pay.
< p>Prime Minister The minister said at a press conference in Lithuania: “I am fully focused on doing good for the British people. Their priorities are my priorities.
“Cut inflation in half because that's the best way to ease their burden and cost of living, cut down the queues because it's wrong that people have to wait that long.” as they currently are, and stopping boats because it's about simple fairness.”
Meanwhile, Mr Hunt used an interview with ITV's Peston to double down on the insistence that loans are not will be used to fund any wages. rises.
He said: “If you finance any public sector wage increase with increased borrowing this year, it will pump billions of pounds of extra money into the economy.”
The Chancellor also downplayed the value. the likelihood of tax cuts coming soon, saying, “People who want tax cuts, like me and every conservative, want to put more money in people's pockets. And the fastest way to put money in people's pockets, and actually quite a large amount of money, is to halve inflation.”
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