Cabinet ministers crank up pressure on Theresa May to ease austerity
The Health Secretary wants to scrap the public sector pay cap, while the Education Secretary says more cash is needed for schools.
Sunday 2 July 2017 15:02, UK
Theresa May is under pressure to ease up on austerity, with senior members of her Cabinet calling for changes to policy on public sector pay, schools funding and university tuition fees.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove said the Government should listen to independent bodies that review public sector pay and accept their findings.
It comes a week after Labour attacked a Government "shambles" for initially raising, then playing down hopes, that the cap could be lifted.
Mr Gove told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme it is the "collective view of Government" to "respect the integrity" of independent public sector pay review bodies.
One of these warned in March that the 1% cap is putting "stress" on the health service.
Mr Gove suggested in the interview he was "suppressing" his own views on austerity, saying: "These pay review bodies have been set up in order to ensure that we can have authoritative advice on what's required in order to ensure that the public services on which we rely are effectively staffed and the people within them are effectively supported.
"I think we should respect the integrity of that process.
"I'm not an individual, I'm a member of the Government and a member of a collective team and the collective view of Government policy, which helpfully was endorsed by the Labour Party spokesman Jon (Ashworth) earlier is that we should respect the integrity of the process.
"One of the things about Government is that you don't exercise your views on the basis of whim. You've written a brilliant article in the Sunday Times today making it clear that sometimes you have to suppress your own views, Andrew.
"You sometimes have to suppress your own views, I sometimes might suppress mine in order to ensure that we can operate successfully as a collective team."
His intervention ties in with reports that Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is to demand a wage boost for NHS workers.
Mr Hunt wants an end to the 1% pay cap for nurses and other health workers, citing evidence from the Government's own NHS pay review body published in March, reports the Observer.
Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth told the BBC: "I think they should consider giving people a pay rise in line with earnings.
"But clearly they are not going to be able to overturn the 14% loss that NHS staff have had over seven years, but they have to come up with responsible recommendations which we would accept."
Meanwhile, Education Secretary Justine Greening is calling for an extra £1bn to protect per pupil schools funding and will demand a statement in weeks, according to the Sunday Telegraph.
A Downing Street source said the Government was responding to the recommendations of public sector pay review bodies which are currently reporting to ministers "on a case-by-case basis".
The source said the pay cap was brought in to "deal with the mess we inherited from Labour" and acknowledged the "hard work and sacrifice" made by public sector workers, saying jobs had been protected and the deficit reduced by three-quarters.
The source also made clear there are no moves to change tuition fee policy after Mrs May's top aide, Damian Green, said Britain may need to have a national debate on the issue.
Mr Green was answering questions after a speech calling for Tory modernisation to win over young metropolitan voters who back Labour, which promised to scrap tuition fees in the election and appeared to enjoy high levels support among young voters.
The First Secretary of State told the Bright Blue think-tank's conference on Saturday that the current system, with fees capped at £9,250 a year, allows UK universities to deliver high-quality courses and teaching.
But he also acknowledged that student debt was a "huge issue", and concluded: "It may well be that this is a national debate that we need to have."