Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced public sector workers in the UK, including teachers, doctors and police, will get pay rises of around 6%.
Speaking today (July 13) the PM said government was accepting the headline recommendations of the Pay Review Bodies in full, meaning pay for public sector will “go up by a significant amount.”
The cost is potentially £3bn-£5bn which the PM says will not come from borrowing or increasing taxes but will come from cuts in government departments.
Pay increases
Police – 7%
NHS – 6%
Junior doctors – 6% + £1,250 one-off payment
Prison officers – 7%
Armed Forces – 5% + £1,000 one-off payment
Teachers – 6.5%
Teaching unions
The PM said that in response to the pay offer: “All teaching unions have just announced that they’re suspending all planned strikes immediately.
“Teachers will return to the classroom. Disruption to our children’s education will end.
“And the unions have themselves confirmed that this pay offer is properly funded. And so, they’re recommending to their members an end to the entire dispute.”
He then urged NHS workers who have taken to the picket lines to end industrial action, adding: “Today’s offer is final. There will be no more talks on pay.
“We will not negotiate again on this year’s settlements. And no amount of strikes will change our decision. Instead, the settlement we’ve reached today gives us a fair way to end the strikes.”
‘Yet another pay cut in real terms’
However, the British Medical Association (BMA) says the offer represents another pay cut.
The BMA Chair of Council, Professor Phil Banfield said: “This offer is exactly why so many doctors are feeling they have no option but to take industrial action as they have suffered years of below-inflation pay awards and once again the Government and the DDRB have both failed to address that in this year’s uplift.
“Today’s announcement represents yet another pay cut in real terms and serves only to increase the losses faced by doctors after more than a decade’s worth of sub-inflation pay awards. It completely ignores the BMA’s calls to value doctors for their expertise by full pay restoration to 2008/2009 levels.
“With an NHS in crisis – seven and a half million patients on waiting lists, chronic underfunding and doctors being directly targeted with offers of work in Australia – this Government should not be supporting pay uplifts which don’t reverse years of sub inflation pay awards. The narrative that public sector pay fuels inflation has been discredited by economists. Public sector workers are not only working in underfunded services, but they are now being asked to pay for them through further cuts and proposed increased visa costs.”
He added that the offer “does nothing to address the rising costs and workloads crippling general practice currently.”
