LONDON (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Following a reaction from the Tories over its effect on public sector pay, Liz Truss reversed course on her most recent leadership policy appeal to “wage war on Whitehall waste.”
The foreign secretary claimed on Monday night that regional pay boards, rather than national ones, would be used to determine civil servant salaries that reflected their locations and would result in savings of £8,8 million.
However, this would entail paying public servants in less wealthy regions of the nation less than their counterparts in more prosperous regions, such the South East and London.
Experts cautioned that in order to attain the goal, the strategy would need to involve more people than just government agencies, such as police officers, nurses and teachers also lowering wages than workers in the South.
Several Conservatives were outraged by the proposal, and many of Rishi Sunak’s supporters referred to it as “crackers” and “austerity on steroids” on social media.
Ben Houchen, a well-known Tory mayor of the Tees Valley, also told reporters that the strategy would certainly lead to losing the next general election.
Today, however, at noon, Ms. Truss’ team issued a statement adamantly stating that existing levels of public sector pay would unquestionably be maintained, adding, the hard-working frontline staff of the country were society’s bedrock and there wouldn’t be any proposal taken forward on regional pay boards for civil servants or public sector workers.
They also asserted that the strategy had been wilfully misrepresented, but Mark Harper, a former Tory whip, said Team Truss should “stop blaming journalists” for disclosing the information in her own press release.
Levelling Down
Regional pay boards would make it easier to alter officials salaries, ensuring that it appropriately reflected where they worked, according to Ms. Truss’ first announcement. They would also prevent the squeezing out of local firms that couldn’t compete with public sector pay, it was added.
She declared that Whitehall had “too much bureaucracy and stale groupthink” and promised to head a government that persistently concentrates on delivering for the British public, and gives value to hard-working taxpayers if she were elected to Number 10.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a supporter of hers and minister for Brexit opportunities, praised the proposals this morning when appearing on Sky News.
The PCS union’s general secretary, Mark Serwotka, criticised that Ms. Truss would confront opposition every step of the way, while the Prospect union’s general secretary, Mike Clancy, called it a “vacuous attempt to grab headlines friendly to her selectorate.”
Numerous Tory MPs who support Sunak have criticised the proposal, including Simon Hoare, chair of the Northern Ireland Select Committee, and Richard Holden, who claimed that it would “kill levelling up” and be a totally bad project.
Following the U-turn, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor for Labour, stated that the “latest mess” of the Tory leadership race revealed just what Liz Truss thought of public sector workers across Britain.
She said the incident proved her priority would be to decrease working people’s pay packages, adding that doing so would drain local economies of funds and advance the communities backward.
