Treasury chief warns against pay rises as thousands expected to protest in capital over cost of living crisis
Treasury chief Simon Clarke has warned against staff pay rises, suggesting that Brits should avoid “unrealistic expectations around pay”.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he said: “We have to be very careful at this point about preventing inflation from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy”, adding that this would only make the cost of living crisis worse.
It comes as The Bank of England issued an 11 per cent inflation warning and boosted interest rates to 1.25 per cent, putting increasing union pressure on the public sector to boost pay packets in line with these rates.
Thousands are expected to march in London today, calling for the government to do more to tackle the cost of living crisis.
General secretary of the TUC union Frances O’Grady said: “Prices are skyrocketing, yet boardroom bonuses are back to bumper levels. Everyone who works for a living deserves to earn a decent living, but UK workers are suffering the longest and harshest squeeze on their earnings in modern history.
“If we don’t get pay rising across the economy, we will just keep lurching from crisis to crisis. This cost of living emergency has not come out of the blue. It is the result of more than a decade of standstill wages.”
According to TUC, workers have lost almost £20,000 since 2008 because pay has not kept up with inflation.
Downing Street have said it would stick to a “responsible fiscal policy”, accepting that these decisions were not always the most popular.
O’Grady told PA Media that the Tories were now the “party of pay cuts”.