Jeremy Corbyn accused Theresa May of presiding over “a low-pay epidemic” in the UK as he used a noisy and boisterous prime minister’s questions to challenge her repeatedly over the continued cap on public sector pay.
Following a week in which several ministers have called for the cap to be eased, May vigorously defended continued austerity, saying it was more unfair still to “load debt on our children and grandchildren”.
The Labour leader used all his questions to pressure May over issues of pay. He began by noting the prime minister’s acknowledgement of the 69th anniversary of the NHS, adding: “I was hoping she was going to say a bit more about NHS staff and their pay during her birthday greetings.
“After a week of flip-flopping and floundering, we thought we’d got some clarity from Downing Street at last.”
May outlined the process by which a series of pay review bodies recommend rises for NHS staff, teachers and others, and said the government would “consider those reports very carefully”.
But she added: “We will always recognise the need to makes those decisions against the need to live within our means.” Both she and Corbyn valued the contribution of public sector workers, May said but added: “The difference is, I know we have to pay for them.”
May also claimed the UK could go the way of Greece if it does not keep controls on public spending in a defence of austerity that echoed the messages of David Cameron and George Osborne in the 2015 election.
Several other ministers and aides went on to echo that comparison with Greece in a sign there is a concerted effort by the Conservatives to stress their desire for “sound money” and attack Labour on the issue of economic competence.
“There are siren calls from Labour to abandon any kind of fiscal restraint whatsoever, and we’ve seen what happens,” a Conservative spokesman said after PMQs. “What happens, we’ve seen as a case study, is what happens in Greece, and as [the prime minister] pointed out, that saw a 36% reduction in health spending in Greece, and that is no good for nurses and doctors. I think she was suggesting if Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party got the chance to impose its fiscal policies on the United Kingdom that is a very real threat.”
A spokesman for Corbyn described the claims on Greece as “preposterous”.
“The situation in Greece is tied up with the eurozone and the management of the eurozone banks – we’re not remotely in that situation. Our manifesto and our pledges were costed, unlike the government’s,” he said.
Later, Liz Truss, the chief secretary to the Treasury, said the cap on public sector pay was the “responsible thing to do” in response to an urgent question from Labour.
“The process is very simple, we’ve received recommendations from pay review bodies already this year,” she said. “They make decisions based on the individual circumstances within those sectors, we have followed all of their recommendations, we will look at the further recommendations we need to make decisions on and we will look at that balance between affordability and making sure that we retain and recruit high quality public sector workers.
“But this is the right approach, it’s not saying that we’re going to open up the cheque book, bankrupt our public services and see people lose their jobs.”
But during PMQs, Corbyn argued the continued 1% pay limit was causing “real shortages in nursing and teaching” as well as hardship, and accused ministers of “recklessly exploiting the goodwill of public servants”.
Responding to May’s insistence that the government provided “good management of the economy”, Corbyn said: “The prime minister simply doesn’t get it. There is a low-pay epidemic in this country and it has a terrible effect on young people. Those in their 20s will earn £12,500 a year less than the generation that went before them – the first generation to be worse off than the last.
“They’re less likely to be able to buy their own homes, more likely to be saddled with debt, more likely to be in insecure, low-paid work. Except for more misery, what does the prime minister and her government actually offer for the young people of this country?”
Saying the UK was among the only nations where wages had not recovered since the economic crash, Corbyn said more people were using food banks and 4 million children were growing up in poverty.
He said: “The low-pay epidemic is a threat to our economic stability. So can she take some tough choices and instead of offering platitudes, offer some real help, and real support for those in work, young people who deserve better and deserve to be given more optimism rather than greater inequality?”
May responded vigorously, bringing cheers and cries of “more” from some backbenchers.
She said: “It isn’t fair to refuse to take tough decisions and to load debt on our children and grandchildren. It isn’t fair to bankrupt our economy, because that leads to people losing their jobs, and losing their homes.
“And it isn’t fair to go out and tell people that they can have all the public spending they want without paying for it.”
May was also attacked by Corbyn over the cost of her deal to win support from the Democratic Unionists. He said: “The prime minister found £1bn to keep her own job. Why can’t she find the same amount of money to keep nurses and teachers in their job, who after all serve all of us?”
In response, May taunted the Labour leader for calling his frontbench a “government in waiting”. She said: “We all know what that means: waiting to put up taxes, waiting to destroy jobs, waiting to bankrupt out country. We will never let it happen.”
