Public sector pay has fallen by 2.5% in real terms since 2010, while private sector pay rose by just under 4% in the same period. Nurses’ pay fell by 6.5%; teachers’ by even more at 9%. These are the facts that underpin the chancellor Rachel Reeves’s decision that public sector workers will get an above-inflation pay rise this year, in line with the 5.5% recommended by the independent pay review bodies.
These increases are needed not just as a matter of fairness for teachers, nurses and doctors but because falling real rates of public sector pay are compounding the recruitment and retention issues facing hospitals, schools and other public services. That has not stopped the Conservative opposition launching the familiar claim that the government is in the pockets of its trade union paymasters. On Friday, Kevin Hollinrake, the shadow business secretary, said: “The unions are now back in charge and the country will pay the price.”
That is disingenuous in the extreme. The last Conservative government sought to make fiscal savings by suppressing public sector pay. While it may have reduced the size of the overall pay bill – and some of the lowest-paid workers, such as teaching assistants, were relatively protected – the strategy lowered morale and created a staffing crisis across the public sector. In the NHS, there are more than 121,000 vacancies, with the most........