25.04.16
Increasing senior Civil Service pay by more than 1% financially unjustifiable
Senior civil servants will see their pay increase by 1% this year, as the government insisted more would be financially unjustifiable.
Greg Hands MP, chief secretary to the Treasury, announced that the government are accepting the results of the report from the Senior Salaries’ Review Body (SSRB), which recommended the pay increase and warned that the lack of pay increases could lead to recruitment problems in the public sector.
Hands said that introducing more than a 1% pay rise for the Civil Service, as well as senior members of the judiciary and armed forces, would not be compatible with the government’s efforts to reduce public spending.
He said: “Pay restraint continues to be a key part of our plan to finish fixing the public finances. Senior public sector workers, like everyone else, will have to continue playing their part, to ensure we deliver security for working people across the country.”
He added that limiting the pay rise had preserved an estimated 200,000 public sector jobs.
Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA trade union for senior managers in the public sector, accused both the SSRB and the government of failing to go far enough.
“The SSRB has once again proposed inadequate tinkering with the pay system for senior civil servants, despite knowing that the system has failed,” he said.
“With a gender pay gap that seems cast in stone, hundreds of senior civil servants being paid less than the staff they manage and external recruits being paid an average of £20,000 more a year, it’s no wonder that morale and motivation levels remain subterranean.”
A Public Accounts Committee report today also found that government departments’ spending on temporary staff has increased by 90% in the past five years.