Liz Truss has been forced to reverse plans to cut civil service pay outside London after an angry outcry from Tory MPs and the Tory Mayor of Tees Valley.
Rishi Sunak’s campaign called the policy a “dramatic U-turn [which] reveals more than a change of heart” and said it could come at a high cost to the party. “Had this been in a general election, it would have been a potentially fatal target for the Tories themselves.”
A spokesman for Truss’s leadership campaign said there had been a “deliberate misrepresentation of our campaign” – without elaborating – but confirmed he was abandoning plans for regional pay boards for civil servants or industry workers public
“Red Wall” MPs including Jacob Young and Richard Holden raised alarm at the policy announced overnight, as did former cabinet minister Simon Hart, who said it would mean cuts of almost £3,000 to workers in Gal· the
His opponent Sunak’s campaign said the £8.8 billion in pay savings outside London announced in a statement by Truss on Monday night could only be made by cuts across the public sector, including teachers , nurses and the armed forces, estimating an average of approximately. £1,500 each for employees outside South East England.
At midday on Tuesday, Truss’s campaign admitted it would drop the plan and said it had not been the intention to cut pay.
“Current levels of public sector pay will absolutely remain,” a Truss spokesman said. “Anything that suggests otherwise is simply wrong.
“Our front line personal worker is the bedrock of society and there will be no proposals put forward to regional pay boards for civil servants or public sector workers.”
The first major gaffe from Truss, who is favorite to win the race, delighted some MPs supporting Sunak, with one calling it his “dementia tax moment”, referring to the in which former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May was forced to turn U. its social care policy.
Sunak’s backer Mark Harper criticized Truss’s campaign for claiming his plans had been misrepresented. “Stop blaming journalists: reporting what a press release says is not ‘deliberate misrepresentation,'” he tweeted.
Sunak’s campaign also suggested Truss had pushed the policy in 2018 when she was chief secretary to the Treasury. “This was no mistake, Liz wanted it in 2018 as CST. The lady is up for a spin,” said a campaign source, in another pointed reference to Thatcher.
Sunak’s spokesman said the policy showed Truss’s flaws as a candidate. “It shows a serious lack of judgment in setting out plans that would see the pay of police, nurses and our armed forces in Cardiff and Canterbury, Teesside and Taunton drastically cut during a cost of living crisis. It also shows a worrying lack of “adherence to the details in what is already an economic wool plan”.
After the policy was announced overnight, Ben Houchen, the mayor of Tees Valley and a supporter of Sunak, said there was no way to achieve the figure without pay cuts outside London that could increase.
“Actually speechless,” he tweeted. “There’s simply no way to do it without a massive pay cut for 5.5 million people, including nurses, police officers and our armed forces outside London. As much as we’ve worked in places like Teesside would fall apart.”
Holden, the MP for Durham North West, said Truss must “dump politics”, saying the only way to deliver savings would be pay cuts for doctors, nurses and police. Chris Clarkson, MP for Heywood and Middleton, said: “I’m not sure a promise to cut people’s pay based on where they live will survive the first contact with focus groups, let alone the reality.”
Young, the MP for Redcar, tweeted: “Doubt this is the vision of ‘hope’ Penny Mordaunt talked about yesterday… Hope for Americans being cut? [Truss] must withdraw from this policy as a matter of urgency.”
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Jacob Rees-Mogg had previously denied Truss’ plans to cut the pay of public sector workers outside the capital by introducing regional pay boards, but then refused to say how billions of savings could be achieved promises
Truss’ original policy statement said it could be “adopted for all public sector workers in the long term”.
Sunak’s campaign said that to achieve the £8.8bn savings, civil servants’ salaries would have to be halved. The policy is believed to have been based on a report by the Taxpayers Alliance which examined the entire public sector workforce without exception.
Signs that the policy was in trouble began on Tuesday morning when Rees-Mogg, a supporter of Truss and the minister in charge of civil service efficiency, said it was “not the plan at the moment” to cut pay for the public sector in general. savings of £8.8 billion promised by Truss. “The discussion at the moment is around officials,” he said.
In the original statement, which proposed regional pay tables, Truss said it would “match pay to the cost of living where civil servants actually work” and that would save up to £8.8bn.
Experts have said that this figure is not feasible for civil servants alone. Alex Thomas, director of programs at the Institute for Government think tank, said the entire annual bill for the civil service was around £9bn.
Labor said the original plan would have dealt a £7.1bn hit to the local economies of Yorkshire, the North and the Midlands. Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said: “Liz Truss is a liability that has lingered in this Tory cabinet for almost a decade in which the Tories have fueled a cost-of-living crisis.”