Department for Education to ‘reprioritise’ existing budgets for pay rise
Richard Adams
The Department for Education is to raid its existing budgets for £1.4bn to help fund the 6.5% pay rise offered to teachers in England, as part of the deal announced between the government and the teaching and school leader unions.
How pay rises would be funded was a major sticking point, with the unions insisting that pay increases come with extra resources from the government rather than being met from school budgets, as has happened in the past.
Today’s joint announcement from No 10, the DfE and the unions stated: “Importantly, the government’s offer is properly funded for schools. The government has committed that all schools will receive additional funding above what was proposed in March, building on the additional £2bn given to schools in the autumn statement.”
The government had argued that its previous offer – amounting to an average rise of 4.3% – could be afforded out of the £2bn increase last year, a position supported by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
But the “additional funding” being promised to pay for the higher increase announced today will come from the DfE, with an extra £500m in the 2023-24 financial year and £900m in 2024-25. The DfE said it will “reprioritise” its existing budgets “while protecting core budgets”.
The DfE said it would also provide a hardship fund of up to £40m “to support those schools facing the greatest financial challenges”.
Key events
Tobi Thomas
Catastrophic winter pressure on the NHS prompted junior doctors to ballot for strike action, the co-chair of the British Medical Association junior doctors committee said as members began a five-day walkout.
Rob Laurenson told Radio 4’s Today programme the doctors had chosen to ballot after last winter “because year on year we’ve been saying that winters are catastrophic and that there are dangers”.
Junior doctors began a five-day strike in England on Thursday, in what is being called the longest walkout of its kind in NHS history. It comes amid continuing protests over pay in the health service.
Laurenson added: “And now, what we’ve realised is that people are compartmentalising this sense of crisis in the NHS to winters alone. It is true that there will at least be one hospital in the country that is severely understaffed any single day of the year, and its the government’s responsibility to be able to facilitate the environment for healthcare to be delivered at high standards to the people of this country.”
The government has been challenged in the Commons over plans to close railway ticket offices, including by the speaker, who told the rail minister that he was being misinformed by train operators.
Labour described the consultation over the proposals to close most ticket offices in England as a “sham” and Conservative MPs also raised concerns, as unions staged demonstrations around the country.
The rail minister, Huw Merriman, sought to reassure MPs over what he said were industry-led proposals to cut costs, with revenue falling after the pandemic.
Merriman said he believed that staff were better deployed on station concourses rather than “behind a glass screen”, adding: “I give the commitment again from the train operators that no currently staffed station will become unstaffed as a result of these changes.”
The comment prompted an unusual intervention from the Commons speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who highlighted issues in his Chorley constituency.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle told Merriman that at Chorley “the proposal is only to have someone available nine until four, which is half the time the ticket office was [open] … What you are being told isn’t the case.”
Department for Education to ‘reprioritise’ existing budgets for pay rise
Richard Adams
The Department for Education is to raid its existing budgets for £1.4bn to help fund the 6.5% pay rise offered to teachers in England, as part of the deal announced between the government and the teaching and school leader unions.
How pay rises would be funded was a major sticking point, with the unions insisting that pay increases come with extra resources from the government rather than being met from school budgets, as has happened in the past.
Today’s joint announcement from No 10, the DfE and the unions stated: “Importantly, the government’s offer is properly funded for schools. The government has committed that all schools will receive additional funding above what was proposed in March, building on the additional £2bn given to schools in the autumn statement.”
The government had argued that its previous offer – amounting to an average rise of 4.3% – could be afforded out of the £2bn increase last year, a position supported by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
But the “additional funding” being promised to pay for the higher increase announced today will come from the DfE, with an extra £500m in the 2023-24 financial year and £900m in 2024-25. The DfE said it will “reprioritise” its existing budgets “while protecting core budgets”.
The DfE said it would also provide a hardship fund of up to £40m “to support those schools facing the greatest financial challenges”.
The president of the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association Dr Naru Narayanan has said it is unlikely the prime minister’s announcement will bring an end to industrial action:
Instead of serious negotiation on doctors’ pay we’ve had a grandstanding PR stunt which remains scant on detail.
The government has known the pay review body recommendations since May, but is still sitting on its detailed findings. This underlines why we are calling for root-and-branch reform of the system.
What we do know is that this is in an imposed outcome with funding apparently coming from NHS cost-cutting. Slicing into health budgets is no way to resolve industrial action centred on staffing and retention, and overall a concern for patient care.
Imposing it in this like-it-or-lump-it way is also a total misreading of the mood on the ground.
The petulant refusal to negotiate we’ve heard from the prime minister today won’t help at all and betrays a level of immaturity at the heart of government.
There is a way to resolve industrial action by doctors, but that’s going to require serious discussion and acknowledgement of the central issue, which is over a decade of real-terms pay cuts. Without this it’s highly doubtful we’ll see an end to strikes.
Mike Clancy, the general secretary of the Prospect union, which represents staff at organisations such as the Met Office, Health and Safety Executive and Natural England, has said:
For a prime minister and chancellor who came into office promising economic stability, the chaotic handling of this process will inspire little confidence in workers worried about their futures during the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.
The fact that they are taking a knife to public services to pay for these pay rises signals that they have learned nothing from the austerity years.
More than a decade of underfunding left us unprepared for the pandemic with public services across the board at breaking point.
In particular, freezing civil service recruitment in the Ministry of Defence is a disastrous error that risks putting our nation’s security at risk. The department already has thousands of vacancies, and many of these civil servants work directly supporting the effort to win the war in Ukraine.
It’s time the government recognised the value of its public services and allocated the money required to maintain them properly.
Gove gives evidence to Covid inquiry
Michael Gove, the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, is giving testimony to the Covid inquiry.
During the pandemic, Gove served as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and Cabinet Office minister. You can follow his testimony here:
It is perhaps notable that Sunak tries to head off criticism that it has taken a great deal of time – and not a small amount of strife, including the cancelled appointments and lengthening NHS waiting lists he explicitly cites – for his government to come up with this offer.
The prime minister says he has agreed to honour the independent bodies’ recommendations. But that came after nearly three weeks of ministers talking up the idea that he might not.
Moreover, public sector pay negotiations in general have been dragging on for many months, with several rounds of strikes causing significant disruption. Critics will ask why, if the prime minister think this is such a reasonable offer, it could not have been made earlier.
It is also worth noting that the offer still constitutes real-terms pay cuts for millions of workers, coming on top of what unions say have been many years of the same.
They are also nowhere near, in percentage-point terms, the 12.4% nominal increases junior doctors have been offered in Scotland. And that is not to mention the 26% the BMA has said would be needed to return the realterms pay of junior doctors’ in England to pre-Tory government levels.
Downing Street has released a full transcript of Rishi Sunak’s speech announcing the new pay offer.
When making decisions on pay, as your prime minister, I have a responsibility to be fair. Fair to public sector workers who do so much in the service of our country, but also fair to taxpayers who ultimately fund our public services.
And the best way we’ve found of making fair decisions about public sector pay are the independent pay review bodies.
They were called for by the unions themselves. And, for over four decades, they have been the independent arbiters of what is fair and responsible. Those bodies have considered a range of evidence about where to set this year’s pay. And their recommendations to government are for public sector pay rises to go up by a significant amount.
Now, clearly, this will cost all of you as taxpayers more than we had budgeted for. That’s why the decision has been difficult and why it has taken time to decide the right course of action.
I can confirm that, today, we’re accepting the headline recommendations of the pay review bodies in full. But we will not fund them by borrowing more or increasing your taxes.
It would not be right to increase taxes on everyone to pay some people more; particularly when household budgets are so tight. Neither would it be right to pay for them by higher borrowing, because higher borrowing simply makes inflation worse.
Instead, because we only have a fixed pot of money to spend from that means government departments have had to find savings and efficiencies elsewhere in order to prioritise paying public sector workers more.
Now there is a clear message here. There are always choices, budgets are not infinite. When some ask for higher pay, that will always create pressures elsewhere costs which must ultimately be borne by the taxpayer – or spending less on our other priorities.
So that’s our decision. And having honoured the independent pay review process, I urge all union leaders to accept these pay offers and call off their strikes.
Already, earlier this year, the NHS staff council representing over half a dozen unions, and over a million NHS workers made a significant decision and voted to accept our pay offer and suspend strikes.
I’m grateful to them and their members. And, today, in response to the news of our decision, I’m pleased to say that we’ve had another major breakthrough. All teaching unions have just announced that they’re suspending all planned strikes immediately.
Teachers will return to the classroom. Disruption to our children’s education will end. And the unions have themselves confirmed that this pay offer is properly funded. And so, they’re recommending to their members an end to the entire dispute.
So it is now clear: Momentum across our public services is shifting. The vast majority, who just want to get on with their life’s calling of serving others, are now returning to work.
And, in that spirit, I want to address those yet to do so. Now that we’ve honoured the independent pay recommendations, I implore you: Do the right thing, and know when to say yes.
In particular, for doctors and consultants, I would say this: We have a national mission for all of us to make the NHS strong again. The government has not only made today’s decision on pay, we’ve backed the NHS with record funding, delivered the first ever fully funded longterm workforce plan and met the BMA’s number one ask of government, with a pensions tax cut worth £1bn.
So, we should all ask ourselves, whether union leaders – or, indeed, political leaders – how can it be right to continue disruptive industrial action?
Not least because these strikes lead to tens of thousands of appointments being cancelled every single day, and waiting lists going up, not down.
So, today’s offer is final. There will be no more talks on pay. We will not negotiate again on this year’s settlements. And no amount of strikes will change our decision. Instead, the settlement we’ve reached today gives us a fair way to end the strikes. A fair deal for workers. And a fair deal for the British taxpayer. Thank you.
Rishi Sunak said “it’s not about cuts” but about departments reprioritising resources.
The prime minister said:
We are reprioritising. So we are asking departments to reprioritise to support public sector workers and that will mean in other areas – it’s not about cuts, it’s just about focusing on public sector workers’ pay rather than other things.
And I’m really pleased that the teaching unions specifically have said that this pay offer is properly funded.
He said “no cuts will need to be made” in schools.
Fees for migrants’ visa applications and NHS access will rise ‘significantly’ to help fund public sector pay increases
The government will help fund public sector pay increases by “significantly” raising fees for migrants’ visa applications and NHS access, Rishi Sunak said.
The prime minister told a Downing Street press conference: “What we have done are two things to find this money.
“The first is we’re going to increase the charges that we have for migrants who are coming to this country when they apply for visas.
“And indeed, something called the immigration health surcharge, which is the levy that they pay to access the NHS.
“So all of those fees are going to go up and that will raise over a billion pounds.”
New pay offer is ‘final’, says Sunak
Rishi Sunak offered a warning to trade unions and workers still involved in strikes and industrial action.
He told a Downing Street press conference that the new pay offer is “final”.
“Now there’s a clear message here. There are always choices. Budgets are not infinite. When some ask for higher pay, that will always create pressures elsewhere,” he said.
“It is now clear momentum across our public services is shifting. The vast majority who just want to get on with their life’s calling of serving others are now returning to work.
“Today’s offer is final. There will be no more talks on pay. We will not negotiate again on this year’s settlements and no amount of strikes will change our decision.”
He said the accepted recommendations were a “fair deal for the British taxpayer”.
