Keir Starmer has blasted Boris Johnson for freezing the pay of NHS heroes - while giving Dominic Cummings a 40% raise.
The Labour leader said it was "absolutely wrong" to make all public-sector workers take a pay freeze.
Asked if it was financially responsible to give pay rises without tax hikes, the Labour leader said: "We have to have a plan for the future to rebuild the foundations of our country.
"You don't do that by freezing the pay of those at the front line throughout this pandemic, public-sector workers, while at the same time giving people like Dominic Cummings a pay rise."
Asked what he would say to private-sector employees who have had pay cuts or lost their jobs, Sir Keir said: "What I say to them is we need the recovery to work, and that means we need businesses to succeed over the next six months.
"We need to do everything we can to stimulate growth and we do not do that by the sort of Budget we saw on Wednesday."
Health service unions denounced the proposed 1% pay award for NHS workers award as a "kick in the teeth" for staff who had given "absolutely everything" over the past year to keep the public safe.
But Mental Health minister Nadine Dorries defended the 1% rise - which is expected to be a real terms pay cut after inflation - as “what we can afford.”
The Prime Minister quietly handed top aide Cummings a 40% pay rise last year - just months before he left Downing Street.
The PM's outgoing top aide, portrayed by many as being in touch with the fears and concerns of working-class voters, saw his salary rise to at least an eye-watering £140,000 of taxpayers' cash in 2019-20 - an inflation-busting rise of £40,000.
Cummings left his Downing Street role in December.
Mr Cummings' final salary would have paid the average annual wage of 4.2 nurses.
