DOWNING Street has sought to brush aside mounting ministerial pressure on Theresa May to ease austerity and end the one per cent pay cap for millions of public sector workers.
The latest cabinet minister to call for a wage boost for the likes of nurses and teachers is Boris Johnson with a Whitehall source close to the Foreign Secretary, stressing how he wanted to see a pay increase for public sector workers after seven years of the pay cap and believed the recommendations of independent pay review bodies which backed such increases should be followed.
The Prime Minister is under strain to relax austerity after the Conservatives lost their majority to Labour, which has pledged to scrap the one per cent public sector pay ceiling. Any removal of the cap, it is thought, would cost the Exchequer several billions of pounds a year.
Last week, Derek Mackay, the Scottish Government’s finance secretary, promised to lift the cap on public sector pay unilaterally north of the border in the face of threats by nurses to go on strike.
Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, had made clear her administration would abandon the UK-wide pay deal that has restricted annual pay rises for some 5.1 million workers, including 1.6m in the NHS and 1.5m in public education.
The UK Government insider explained that Mr Johnson "strongly believes" a public sector pay rise could be done in a "responsible way," which would not put undue pressure on the public finances and would not work against the Chancellor, Philip Hammond’s aim of balancing the books by the middle of the next decade.
The secretary of secretary’s view goes further than that of his old adversary and cabinet colleague Michael Gove, who said the Government had "got to listen" to the pay review bodies, one of which has already recommended a pay rise for NHS workers this year, albeit of only one per cent.
The Whitehall source said: "The Foreign Secretary supports the idea of public sector workers getting a better pay deal and believes the pay review recommendations are right. He also strongly believes the rises can be done in a responsible way and without causing fiscal pressures."
But Mrs May's spokesman told reporters at a regular briefing: "The position is exactly as it was set out last week, in that there are pay review bodies reporting.
"We have responded to some and we will respond to others in due course, as is normal later this year."
Recommendations for a one per cent pay rise this year for nurses, doctors, dentists and members of the armed forces have already been accepted by ministers but further recommendations are still to come from review bodies dealing with teachers, the police, senior civil servants and prison officers, potentially allowing Mr Hammond to be more generous to these groups in his autumn Budget.
There is also the possibility that the Chancellor could seek to increase any pay award and backdate it. Inflation is currently running at 2.9 per cent.
However, when asked whether or not it would be open for Mr Hammond retrospectively to reopen decisions taken earlier this year, the PM's spokesman replied: "These are the settlements for 2017/18."
Over the weekend, Mr Gove said it was the Government's "collective view" to "respect the integrity" of pay review bodies and suggested he was "suppressing" his own opinion on austerity.
In March, the NHS pay review body highlighted "widespread concerns" about recruitment, retention and motivation among employers and staff and said "we are approaching the point when the current pay policy will require some modification, and greater flexibility, within the NHS".
Conservative MP Maria Caulfield, a former nurse, said she had found the pay cap "extremely difficult" and most nurses worked extra shifts to make ends meet.
She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It's a difficult, stressful, responsible job and if people aren't paid enough so they can make ends meet they will go and do something else.
"I think there is resentment building and not just in nursing, but across the public sector, that frontline staff have carried these services for the last seven years and if there is no recognition of that and no pay coming forward to recognise that then that's when the resentment builds," she added.
Stephen Crabb, the former work and pensions secretary, said Ms Caulfield had made a "compelling" case for a pay hike.
But Lord Lamont, the former Conservative Chancellor, claimed it was wrong for cabinet ministers to "gang up" on Mr Hammond.
“It is making his position, which is always very difficult, very very awkward indeed," declared the Scottish peer.
The Tory grandee said austerity was "just another word for living within ones means".
He added: "It's not really austerity. People are talking about austerity as though it were an issue of too many repeats on television or they had got tired of watching Poldark and wanted a better programme. This is not a choice. It is unavoidable that we have restraint on public spending."
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