Afternoon summary
- Downing Street has insisted that government policy on public sector pay has not changed, despite the policing minister Nick Hurd telling MPs that a pay rise for police is “under active discussion”. Asked about Hurd’s comment, the prime minister’s spokesman said:
There are public sector pay review bodies carrying out their work. We are in the process of working through recommendations. That is what the minister was referring to.
- James Brokenshire, the Northern Ireland secretary, has given Northern Ireland’s politicians more time to reach a deal on power-sharing. Despite the deadline for the talks being reached without an agreement, he told MPs that he was not quite ready to legislate to enable civil servants to spend money in place of an elected executive. He said:
This hiatus cannot continue for much longer. There is no doubt that the best outcome is for a new executive to take those strategic decisions in the interest of all ...
If no agreement is reached, legislation in Westminster may then be required to give authority for the expenditure of Northern Ireland departments through an appropriations bill. We have not quite reached that point. That point is coming and the lack of a formal budget is not something that can be sustained indefinitely.
-
Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, has told MPs 181 tower blocks have now failed fire safety tests for cladding ordered after the Grenfell Tower fire. That amounts to a 100% failure rate, he said.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Javid is responding to Healey.
He says the offer is for high quality temporary accommodation. It will be appropriate to their family, and their family size. They will not be forced to move into somewhere they don’t want. Some residents would rather stay in hotels, he says. And some residents would rather move away from the tower.
He says temporary accommodation could include hotel accommodation.
John Healey, the shadow housing minister, says ministers have been off the pace. They have been too slow to grasp the problem, and too slow to act.
He asks how many survivors are still in hotels?
Does the promise of good quality temporary accommodation include hotels?
He says the fire safety cladding tests are too slow and too narrow.
He says if Kensington and Chelsea were a school, it would be in special measures. He urges the government to intervene to restore trust in the council.
Sajid Javid's statement on Grenfell Tower
Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, is making a Commons statement updating MPs on Grenfell Tower.
He starts by running through steps that have already been taken.
He says the director of public prosecutions has said there will be no prosecutions for anyone illegally subletting flats at Grenfell Tower. People need to come forward with information about who was living in the tower, he says.
He says he looks foward to working with the new leader of Kensington and Chelsea council.
The prime minister said everyone who lost their home would get a good quality temporary home within three weeks, he says. He says that promise will be honoured.
Some families have decided they would prefer to move away, he says.
He says every family will have an offer of temporary accommodation by Wednesday.
But they will be given time if they do not want to move immediately, he says.
He says 181 tower blocks have now failed fire cladding safety tests. That is a 100% failure rate.
Where landlords cannot make the buildings safe, tenants will have to be moved out, he says.
He says he has asked for the testing process to be independently reviewed. A team from Sweden reviewed it. They decided the tests were sound, he says. He says a note on this has been put on the gov.uk website (pdf).
Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, has written a good post about the Conservative party and public sector pay on his Facebook page. Here’s an extract.
Gove and Johnson are officially talking nonsense when suggesting that public sector pay can be increased without raising taxes or fundamentally changing the government’s approach to reducing the deficit.
I say that’s official, because it is the unambiguous view of the Office for Budget Responsibility - the government’s own watchdog of its finances ...
In other words there is no money behind the back of the sofa to finance an increase in the pay of teachers, nurses, police officers greater than the ordained 1% ceiling.
That means the government has two choices:
1) it could finance such pay rises via a £6bn per years or so tax rise, which many Tories would find as palatable as a steaming plate of sick;
2) or it could publicly concede that the Labour party of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are the economic gurus and have won the fiscal argument - and that too would be as edible for most Tories as an ice cold plate of the same noxious substance.
So at a time when this government’s grip on power is tenuous and when the authority of the prime minister is nebulous, Tory MPs may be precisely wrong that giving public sector workers a real pay rise will be the rehabilitation of their party; it could equally confirm to much of the electorate that they stand for precisely nothing of significance.
The White House has ruled out President Trump making a surprise visit to the UK when he comes to Europe later this month, the FT reports.
From the mouth of Sean Spicer, no less. https://t.co/xpMDrlhkjz pic.twitter.com/nM7Dr2ZyJG
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) July 3, 2017
Here is the Times’ Patrick Maguire on James Brokenshire’s statement.
James Brokenshire has again failed to make good on his threat to call another Stormont election almost four months after first making it.
— Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) July 3, 2017
Particularly bold of Brokenshire to suggest a deal could come this week after today's DUP and Sinn Fein. Secretary of state for optimism
— Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) July 3, 2017
Brokenshire tells MPs that "time is short". As he said it was on March 27th.
— Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) July 3, 2017
Brokenshire is responding to Smith.
He says Theresa May has been involved in trying to get a deal on power sharing.
He says he will put a letter in the Commons library giving details of the proposed legislation for transparency in Northern Ireland with regard to political donations.
Owen Smith, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, is responding now.
He says he admires Brokenshire for continuing to believe that an executive could be formed.
He says he is surprised that Theresa May has not taken personal responsibility for trying to end the deadlock in Northern Ireland.
He says an appropriations bill would be seen as direct rule. He hopes it can be avoided.
He welcomes the decision to legislate to force parties to declare the sources of political donations. Will the same rules apply in Northern Ireland as apply in the rest of the UK?
Brokenshire says the government will continue to govern in the interests of everyone in Northern Ireland.
He says he stands ready to facilitate the creation of a new power-sharing executive.
Brokenshire says government will legislate to force Northern Ireland parties to declare sources of their funding.
Brokenshire says the government will not forget its obligation to provide good government.
He says some money remains unallocated, to allow an incoming executive to decide who it spends that cash.
He says if no agreement is reached, legislation may be required in Westminster to allow money to be spent in Northern Ireland.
He says that point has not been reached yet. But it is coming. Money cannot continue to be spent in Northern Ireland without a formal budget.
He says he intends to bring forward legislation to bring forward legislation forcing Northern Ireland parties to declare the sources of their funding from 1 July 2017.
- Brokenshire says government will legislate to force Northern Ireland parties to declare the sources of their funding.
James Brokenshire's statement on Northern Ireland
James Brokenshire, the Northern Ireland secretary, is making his Commons statement now.
He says that after the Northern Ireland elections in March, the parties in Northern Ireland could not agree a power-sharing administration.
Parliament passed legislation to extend the talks deadline until 29 June.
That deadline passed without a deal.
Since then talks have continued, and some progress has been made, but there is still no deal, he says.
He says the prime minister has been involved.
I continue to believe that a deal remains achievable.
He says since March civil servants have been making decisions in Northern Ireland.
But they have not been able to make strategic decisions.
This has created uncertainty.
This hiatus cannot simply continue for much longer.
The department for culture, media and sport (DCMS) has become the department for digital, culture, media and sport, it has announced. Karen Bradley, the culture secretary (or digital secretary, perhaps) said this was because “the department has taken on significant new responsibilities in recent years, so that half of its policy and delivery work now covers the digital sectors - telecommunications, data protection, internet safety, cyber skills and parts of media and the creative industries.”
Cunningly, it is going to keep the same acronym, because DCMS used to be Department for Culture, Media and Sport, but now stands for department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.)
A DCMS spokesman said the rebranding had cost about £3,000, with costs kept to a minimum because most of the changes to items like letterheads were done digitally.
The Labour press statement about the appointment of 20 shadow ministers was relatively straightforward. The party may have missed the true significance of the reshuffle because, according to the Labour party chair Ian Lavery, the appointment of Chris Williamson as a shadow fire services minister signals the death knell of Thatcherism. Lavery said:
Chris is a first class MP and a true representative of his constituency. He has a reputation as being no fan of neoliberalism and his appointment is a sign that the days of free market Thatcherism are coming to an end.
Lavery and Williamson (who was re-elected this year after losing his Derby North seat narrowly in 2015) are both leftwingers and committed Jeremy Corbyn supporters.
The Lavery quote is from a press notice about Williamson’s appointment sent out by a press officer highlighting Williamson’s record on fire safety, including his campaigning for sprinklers. Williamson was shadow fire services minister between 2010 and 2013. The press release also quotes Matt Wrack, the Fire Brigades Union general secretary, saying:
This appointment is exactly what’s needed for our fire services and for our public sector in general. Chris is a tough politician on the issues that matter. He’ll be a minister for ordinary people who want safety, not profit, to be a key driver of public policy. We look forward to working with him.
Pay rise for police officers 'under active discussion', says Home Office minister
And this is what Nick Hurd, the police minister, told MPs about how a pay rise for police officers was under “active consideration”. He was responding to a question from the shadow Home Office minister Louise Haigh. He said:
We want to make sure that frontline public service workers, including the police, are paid fairly for their work, not least because of the contribution that they have made over the years to reducing the deficit that we inherited from the party opposite. And in that the work that they have done to safeguard hundreds of thousands of jobs.
How we do that, in a way that is sustainable and affordable, is under active discussion.
In the Commons during Home Office questions Nick Hurd, the police minister, has said that a pay rise for police officers is “under active consideration”, the Daily Mirror’s Jack Blanchard reports.
NEWS: Police Minister Nick Hurd tells the Commons that giving cops a decent pay rise "is under active discussion."
— Jack Blanchard (@Jack_Blanchard_) July 3, 2017
A febrile atmosphere around the Ulster loyalist marching season is hampering moves to reach compromise at the talks aimed at restoring power sharing in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein warned today.
Conor Murphy, one of Sinn Fein’s negotiators at the talks in Stormont Castle, said it was a “bizarre situation” that the parties locked in discussions have to take a break because “the atmosphere becomes too hostile for political negotiations.”
Murphy claimed it was putting particular pressure on the DUP not to budge on contentious issues like Sinn Fein’s demand for an Irish Language Act.
“Now we find ourselves up against the Twelfth of July where the atmosphere becomes so hostile that the DUP are even less likely to move on some of these issues,” Murphy added.
The 12th of July when Orange Order members and their supporters commemorate William of Orange’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 is the climax of the Ulster loyalist marching season. A number of leading DUP figures are slated in to speak at Orange demonstrations across Northern Ireland next Wednesday including a several venues with a relatively hardline loyalist audience.
Here are some more lines from the World at One interview with Stephen Crabb, the Conservative former work and pension secretary.
- Crabb said the Conservative party had to show it was on the side of public sector workers.
We can’t fight another general election campaign where the Conservartives are seen as the bogeymen when it comes to public sector workers. There are a great many people on the front line of public services ... who do recognise the truth of what it is we are trying to achieve, reducing the deficit, [and] are doing great things in terms of reforming their areas of the public sector. The Conservative party, we need to show that we are on the side of these people. This issue isn’t just one of pay; it is about being seen to be positive about the public sector, backing those public sector workers and managers who are making a difference every day of the week and making our public sector sustainable for the long term.
- He said that although was not in favour of lifting the 1% pay cap for all public sector workers, he did think it should be lifted for some of them, especially nurses.
I lost count of the number of times people said to me on the doorstep, “Well, I wouldn’t mind paying a bit more tax if I knew that it was going into nurses’ pay packets.” I think people feel an enormous amount of sympathy for nursing.
- He ruled out running in a future leadership contest. He stood in last year’s contest, but came second last out of five, getting just 34 votes from MPs. Asked about standing again, he said: “I’ve been there a year ago. I’m not doing that again.”
In the interview he also said that ministers like Boris Johnson should resign if they want to speak out against the government’s public sector pay policy. (See 1.45pm.)
Corbyn appoints 20 shadow ministers
Jeremy Corbyn has announced the appointment of 20 shadow ministers. Here is the list in full.
Environment
David Drew
Holly Lynch
Home Affairs
Nick Thomas Symonds
Chris Williamson
Afzal Khan
Louise Haigh
Scotland
Paul Sweeney
Justice
Gloria de Piero
Imran Hussain
International Development
Roberta Blackman Woods
Transport
Rachael Maskell
Karl Turner
Treasury
Anneliese Dodds
Housing
Tony Lloyd
Melanie Onn
Women and equalities
Carolyn Harris
Defence
Gerald Jones
Local Government
Yvonne Fovargue
Education
Tracy Brabin
Wales
Chris Ruane
Commenting on the appointments, Corbyn said:
I’m delighted to be filling Labour’s shadow front bench with a wealth of talent. Our new shadow ministers will bolster the excellent work of Labour’s shadow cabinet and departmental teams.
These appointments are further evidence that Labour is not just the opposition – we are the government in waiting.
UPDATE: The Telegraph’s Jack Maidment points out that the Labour press notice misspelt the names of two of the MPs on this list.
Jeremy Corbyn appoints 20 MPs to frontbench, spells two of their names wrong: Rachael Maskell and Gloria De Piero. pic.twitter.com/uF46woLHAp
— Jack Maidment (@jrmaidment) July 3, 2017
FURTHER UPDATE: Guido Fawkes has found a third misspelling.
Labour's press release announces jobs for Gloria Di Piero, Rachel Maskell and Tracey Brabin. It's "De Piero", "Rachael" and "Tracy".
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) July 3, 2017
Updated
Lunchtime summary
- Labour and the Lib Dems have accused Boris Johnson and other Tory cabinet ministers calling for a public sector pay rise of hypocrisy. Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron both spoke out because those ministers now calling for the 1% cap on public sector pay rises to be lifted voted against a Labour amendment last week proposing just this. (See 9.41am.) Downing Street says it has not changed its policy on pay and it has played down prospects of any change being announced before the autumn budget.
- Stephen Crabb, the Conservative former work and pensions secretary, has said that ministers like Boris Johnson should resign if they want to speak out against the government’s public sector pay policy. In an interview on the World at One, Crabb said:
I don’t think it’s a great sight seeing different cabinet members giving slightly different messages to the media. My own personal preference is that people should be direct and upfront. If they want to take a position that is different from that of the official government line, then they should not be in the cabinet ...
Until we get to the point when specific decisions are being made [on public sector pay], I do think that if you are in the cabinet, if you are taking the government’s shilling, then you need to stick rigidly to the government line.
Earlier Lord Lamont, the former Conservative chancellor, also criticised ministers like Johnson for undermining the Treasury on this issue. I will post more from Crabb’s interview soon.
- The cost of building the new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point has risen by £1.5bn, it has been announced. As the Press Association reports, the French energy giant EDF said it will now cost £19.6bn to build the site in Somerset. The news follows a review of the costs and timetable of the project, undertaken after EDF’s final investment decision last September. Commenting on the announcement, the SNP MSP Gillian Martin said:
This latest increase in the total cost of this project shows just how disastrous Hinkley Point is turning out to be. It was always going to be a white elephant - but this is becoming clearer by the week, as costs continue to sky rocket to over £20bn after it was slammed by the National Audit Office for being ‘not value for money’.
Updated
Ahead of Northern Ireland secretary James Brokenshire’s House of Commons statement around 4.30pm which will bring the curtain down on the latest round of talks to restore power sharing back in Belfast, the nationalist SDLP made an 11th hour appeal that failure to cut a dead won’t lead to direct rule.
Colum Eastwood, the SDLP leader, said:
It is utterly exasperating that after months of talks, the DUP and Sinn Fein continue to lock our politics into a complete stalemate. Kicking the can further down the road, will rightly be met with public anger and disappointment.
As the secretary of state prepares to make his statement today, I urge him to ensure that direct rule is not the price that the people of Northern Ireland will have to pay for the political failure of the big two.
I would also urge the Irish government to fully exert its responsibility and role to ensure that the North is not placed at the mercy of a Tory/DUP coalition. In the continuing absence of a local assembly, the Irish government must be centrally involved in order to retain the hard won political balance which underpins Northern politics.
Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told BBC News a few minutes ago that putting up public sector pay cost roughly an extra £2bn for every extra 1% that people received. He said that Philip Hammond, the chancellor, could afford to put pay up a bit, by borrowing more, because his deficit reduction target gave him some flexibility. But he said that Hammond would have to prioritise. He told the programme:
Actually, within the scale of things, you can afford a few billion here or there. But you can’t keep affording a few billion on top of a few billion on top of a few billion. And I guess the thing that the chancellor is going to be worrying about is not ‘Can I afford £2bn, £3bn, £4bn, even £5bn for public sector pay?’ It’s going to be, ‘Well, if I give it for this, they are going to come back for something else and something else.’
So what I would like to see, really, is the chancellor in the autumn budget set out some priorities. Say, ‘Yes, I am willing to spend and borrow a bit more, and this is why my priorities are perhaps for some public pay here, and perhaps for something else over there.’ His worry is that the pressure is just coming here, there and everywhere.
No 10 lobby briefing - Summary
Here are the main points from the Number 10 lobby briefing.
- Downing Street has refused to say whether or not the government backs Labour calls for commissioners to be sent in to take charge of Kensington and Chelsea council. Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, will make a statement to MPs about Grenfell Tower at 3.30pm. Theresa May is also chairing a meeting of the Grenfell Tower taskforce this afternoon.
- Number 10 played down the prospect of any early announcement about public sector pay. “There’s a budget in the autumn,” the prime minister’s spokesman said, when asked when a further statement might come. He said the government had already responded to some public sector pay body reports (covering nurses, doctors and dentists and the armed forces, who are getting a 1% increase in 2017-18) and that it would respond to others in due course. The spokesman would not explicitly rule out re-opening the 2017-18 pay settlements, but he said that recommendations for 2017-18 had already been accepted, suggesting that retrospective pay rises are unlikely.
- The spokesman said Ofgem’s plans to extend a price cap for vulnerable customers was “a step in the right direction”. In their election manifesto the Conservatives went much further, proposing a price cap that would affect 17m customers. Asked if the government would implement that plan, the spokesman said:
Ofgem’s response is a step in the right direction.
We’ve said we need a better energy market and are committed to extending price protection currently in place to some vulnerable energy consumers to more people on the poorest-value tariffs.
We are not ruling anything out, whether that is action by the regulator or legislation.
- The spokesman dismissed criticism of May’s plans to force internet companies to remove extremist content from Max Hill QC, the independent reviewer of terror legislation. As the Guardian reports, Hill told a conference:
I struggle to see how it would help if our parliament were to criminalise tech company bosses who ‘don’t do enough’. How do we measure ‘enough’? What is the appropriate sanction?
We do not live in China, where the internet simply goes dark for millions when government so decides. Our democratic society cannot be treated that way.
But the spokesman said the government was still interested in the idea of creating a law that would lead to companies like Facebook being fined if they do not remove extremist content. He said:
We do not want the internet to be a safe space for extremist content.
- The spokesman said he was “not aware” of any plans for President Trump to visit the UK later this month. Asked about reports that Trump is planning a surprise visit, the spokesman said:
I’m not aware of any plans for the president to visit the UK in the next few weeks ... We have extended an invitation [to Trump for a state visit] that has been accepted and we will set out plans in due course.
The Number 10 lobby briefing is over. It was not particularly illuminating, but I will post a summary soon. Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, is making a Commons statement this afternoon about Grenfell Tower. Asked if the government backed Labour’s call for commissioners to be sent in to run Kensington and Chelsea council, the prime minister’s spokesman said that Javid would be making a statement later and that there was a limit to what Downing Street could say because Javid had to operate in a “quasi-judicial” capacity, so it is possible that there could be an announcement on this this afternoon.
Raising public sector pay could cost £9bn a year by the end of this parliament, says IFS
How much would it cost to lift the 1% cap on public sector pay increases? This report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (pdf) puts provides some figures. The key table is this one.
The IFS has estimated how much extra the Treasury would have to spend to implement the Labour and Lib Dem manifesto plans for public sector pay, compared with the Conservative manifesto plans (keeping the cap). The Lib Dems said they would increase public sector pay in line with inflation. Labour said it would lift the public sector pay cap, and shadow ministers implied this meant accepting pay review body recommendations. The IFS says this latter plan would cost more than £9bn a year by the end of this parliament (2021-22.)
Here’s an extract from the IFS briefing.
In 2016, the public sector paybill (excluding nationalised corporations) was £179bn. This includes the wages and salaries of public sector workers, the employer national insurance contributions, and employers’ pension contributions towards public service pension schemes. With such a large paybill, even small percentage increases can lead to significant increases in the cost of employing public sector workers.
[The table above] shows the estimated increase in employment costs to central and local government as a result of the Labour and Liberal Democrat plans, compared with the current Conservative government’s policy of 1% increases until 2019–20. These costs include the amount that public sector employers would need to pay in terms of higher employer national insurance and pension contributions. The figures therefore show the extra amount that departments and local government would need to receive in funding to pay for the higher wage bill, without having to make any offsetting cuts either to the size of the workforce or to non-wage costs.
I’m off to the lobby briefing now.
I will post again after 11.30am.
Cleaners, porters and security staff at four London hospitals are to stage a three-day strike in a dispute over pay, the Press Association reports. Members of Unite at Barts Health NHS Trust employed by Serco, will walk out on Tuesday, followed by a seven-day stoppage from July 11 and a 14-day strike starting on July 25. Further strike action will also be planned for August and September.
Gloria Sindall, Unite regional officer, said:
Workers across four London hospitals will be taking strike action this week in a battle against low pay.
Cleaners, porters and security staff have seen their real living standards drop year on year.
Workers are now demanding a 30p per hour wage increase.
Serco made over £80m in profit last year but managers are refusing to share these earnings fairly and protect the living standards of the workers.
Rather than try to settle this dispute the private contractor Serco wasted valuable time by offering absolutely nothing new for the workforce at talks with Acas last week.
Unite members are fed up and are preparing for a series of strikes to demand a fair and proper pay rise which recognises the contribution they make to Serco and to Barts.
Northern Ireland’s politicians are to be given further time to reach an agreement that could bring back power sharing government to the region, it emerged today.
Unionist sources at the negotiations in Stormont Castle said the Northern Ireland secretary James Brokenshire is likely to put the talks process into “warm storage” rather than immediately reimpose direct rule from London.
Senior civil servants would run devolved ministries in Belfast over the summer while the main parties represented in the Northern Ireland assembly would be back in August to resume their discussions, they said.
The British government has already pushed the talks through the official legal deadline set by Brokenshire of 29 June. It is now thought both governments in London and Dublin would prefer to create breathing space around the 12th of July - the climax of the Ulster loyalist marching season - and throughout the month before bringing the parties together again.
Brokenshire is scheduled to outline the government’s thinking in a statement to the House of Commons this afternoon.
The main issue of contention overall is still Sinn Fein’s demand for an Irish Language Act. The party wants this act to be a “stand alone” one, which means that the legislation would only concern the rights of Irish speakers and putting the gaelic language on an equal par in law to English.
The DUP, meanwhile, fearing criticism from more hard-line unionists have argued for a more all embracing Culture Act that would not only guarantee the rights of those who speak Irish but also Ulster Scots speakers as well as incorporating the protection of Orange/Protestant culture into legislation.
DUP sources told The Guardian on Monday morning that one idea being floated within their party was for the Northern Ireland Secretary to announce that the salaries of assembly members would be temporarily cut if politicians fail to secure a deal.
“The feeling that the public are outraged that politicians are still getting paid even though the assembly is not sitting, there is no executive and no business is being done. Even a 50% pay cut over the hiatus before talks resume would be an important gesture to the people out there,” one Democratic Unionist source said.
Bank of England staff to go on strike
Bank of England workers are to stage a four-day strike in a dispute over pay, the Press Association reports.
Members of Unite will walk out from July 31, the first strike at the bank in over 50 years.
The announcement follows a 95% vote in favour of industrial action.
Unite members working in the maintenance, parlours and security departments will be taking strike action on July 31, August 1, 2 and 3.
The union warned that if the bank fails to resolve the pay row it will be consulting its members across other departments as part of a plan to escalate the dispute.
The Labour peer Stewart Wood, who was a key policy adviser to Ed Miliband, has an interesting Twitter thread on the Conservatives and public sector pay.
THREAD: Three striking things about the saga of Cabinet splits over the public sector pay cap, that give us a taste of things to come. 1/4
— Stewart Wood (@StewartWood) July 3, 2017
1. Each Cabinet member now feels free to publicly punt their own view on the pay cap, without heed to discipline or fear of slap-down. 2/4
— Stewart Wood (@StewartWood) July 3, 2017
2. Ministers will freelance galore on increased spending, but stay silent on tax increases. The fiscal asymmetry of having no majority. 3/4
— Stewart Wood (@StewartWood) July 3, 2017
3. Gove & Johnson, the cheerleaders of Leave, are pushing hard to lift the pay cap, because they know how toxic austerity is to Brexit. 4/4
— Stewart Wood (@StewartWood) July 3, 2017
Labour and Lib Dems accuse Johnson and other pay rise Tories of hypocrisy
But Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, said on Twitter that Boris Johnson and the other Tory public sector pay rise advocates were “utterly shameless” because they voted against the Labour amendment to the Queen’s speech on Wednesday saying the pay cap should be lifted.
If only there had been a vote on this. Oh there was & the Tories voted against. Utterly shameless. https://t.co/xgmw0Mc677
— Tim Farron (@timfarron) July 3, 2017
Jeremy Corbyn made the same point on Twitter last night.
.@BorisJohnson, if you really think this, why didn't you vote to end the public sector pay cap on Wednesday? https://t.co/aC0SzL6g9k
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) July 2, 2017
And Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, also accused the Tories of hypocrisy on this issue.
The faux concern from Tory MPs on the public sector pay cap is hypocrisy personified, last week they voted to keep the pay cap on nurses etc
— Angela Rayner MP (@AngelaRayner) July 3, 2017
Last week Tory MPs cheering&laughing when they blocked a pay rise for our firefighters&nurses, this week all bogus concern against pay cap!👎
— Angela Rayner MP (@AngelaRayner) July 3, 2017
During the election l must have missed Boris Johnson being a champion of public sector workers demanding pay cap removal? Same old Tories🙄
— Angela Rayner MP (@AngelaRayner) July 3, 2017
Updated
The Conservative MP Maria Caulfield, a former nurse, told the Today programme that she thought public sector workers did deserve a pay rise. She said:
[Nursing is] 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.
On Twitter Stephen Crabb, the Conservative former work and pensions secretary, said she had made a “compelling case”.
Compelling case for a pay increase for nurses being made @BBCr4today by Conservative MP & nurse @mariacaulfield
— Stephen Crabb (@SCrabbPembs) July 3, 2017
This morning Radio 4 has been leading the news with the Guardian’s revelation that Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has joined those Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers calling for the 1% cap on public sector pay rises to be lifted. As the Guardian reports, he thinks it can be done “in a responsible way and without causing fiscal pressures [ie, tax rises]”. Perhaps that £350m a week from the EU will cover it.
The Guardian’s story is interesting for at least four reasons.
1 - With pressure growing like this, it seems more and more likely that the cap will be lifted.
2 - It is yet more evidence that, on austerity, Labour is winning the public argument.
3 - The fact that an increasing number of cabinet ministers are merrily briefing away that they want the cap to go, even though Number 10 tried to rule this out on Wednesday afternoon, shows just how little authority Theresa May has over her senior ministers.
4 - And it is suggests that a covert, long-term leadership campaign is underway. The Today programme has a feature on code-breaking this morning. I was mystified by their puzzle, but I can decode: “The foreign secretary supports the idea of public-sector workers getting a better pay deal.” It means Boris wants to be PM.
Here is the Guardian’s story.
Boris Johnson was echoing what his Vote Leave ally Michael Gove, the new environment secretary, was saying about pay on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday (pdf). According to the BBC, at least six cabinet ministers have now said, either publicly or via proxies, that they favour lifting the pay cap.
But they have provoked a backlash. On the Today programme this morning Lord Lamont, the Conservative former chancellor, criticised Johnson, Gove and the others for their stance. He told the programme.
What concerns me is that there seems to be growing in the Conservative party, and among ministers, a feeling that because the electorate disliked austerity, that this is the message that has come back, and therefore it ought to be discarded. People are talking about austerity as though it was 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.
People may not remember the fact that there was this severe financial crisis in 2007-08. The shadow of it is still with us. Therefore, because the stock of debt is still at a very high level indeed, 86% of GDP, if there were another slowdown in the economy, if there were another financial crisis, if interest rates were to go up - and interest rates are likely to go up - all this poses severe problems for the government ...
The control of public sector pay is extremely important. It is roughly half of current expenditure, and about 30% of total public expenditure. It come to £200bn plus a year. You’ve got to have a restraint on that ...
I think it is not right for cabinet ministers to gang up on the chancellor in this way. I think it is making his position, which is always very difficult, very very awkward indeed. And I do think just to say because a lot of voters in the election objected to what is called austerity, we must abandon it - the fatal flaw in the Conservative campaign in the election was they didn’t make the case ... they didn’t play their strongest card, which is actually their economic competence.
Former senior civil servants have also criticised those Tories backing public sector pay rises without saying how those should be funded. This is from Simon Fraser, who used to be permanent secretary at the Foreign Office.
Would be nice to think Gove & Johnson care more about #publicsectorpay than about making life difficult for Hammond....
— Simon Fraser (@SimonFraser00) July 3, 2017
And this is from Nick Macpherson, who used to be permanent secretary at the Treasury.
Those who want to raise public sector pay should tell us how it should be financed. @michaelgove deeply unconvincing on subject. #soundmoney
— Nick Macpherson (@nickmacpherson2) July 3, 2017
I will post more on this as the day goes on.
Here is the agenda for the day.
11am: Number 10 lobby briefing.
12.30pm: The Labour MP David Lammy gives a speech on his review of racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
12.30pm: The Institute for Government holds a briefing on the repeal bill.
2.30pm: Amber Rudd, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
3.30pm: James Brokenshire, the Northern Ireland secretary, gives a statement on the deadlock in Northern Ireland over attempts to reform the power-sharing executive.
As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.
