LONDON – Britain will push for its toughest public-sector pay deal in at least 30 years by seeking a pay freeze or minimal rise for the 750,000 best-paid staff on the state payroll, the UK treasury said yesterday.
The government, struggling to reduce massive state borrowing, will recommend to pay-review bodies that there should be no salary increase in the next financial year for senior groups such as judges, health-service managers and family doctors.
It is also recommending that a three-year pay deal for senior civil servants should be reopened so they also get a zero per cent increase next year.
“Britain’s public servants are invaluable. But if we want to halve the deficit over four years and protect frontline services, we have to make tough but realistic decisions on pay,” said UK treasury minister Liam Byrne.
Britain’s budget deficit is expected to top 12 per cent of gross domestic product this year as tax receipts crumble in the worst recession in decades.
Both main political parties have pledged to get borrowing down but have so far offered little concrete detail on how they will achieve it.
The treasury announcement on pay comes just before a major speech by opposition Conservative finance spokesman George Osborne, who is expected to set out the party’s economic blueprint should it win an election expected next May.
The treasury said it did not plan to reopen pay deals for lower-paid public-sector workers such as nurses and the police. But it will look again at pay for groups such as prison officers and hospital doctors and recommend low increases for them of between zero and 1 per cent.
Much public-sector pay is determined by pay-review bodies, which take recommendations from government, unions and other parties.
The retail price index measure of inflation, on which many pay deals are based, is running at a negative annual rate of minus 1.7 per cent. – (Reuters)