UK politics live: public sector pay rises next year could be lower than inflation, minister admits

Published on Ottobre 26, 2021

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6.25am EDT
06:25

The UK government is facing fresh calls for funding to help secure Wales’s coal tips and avoid future disasters, PA Media reports. PA says:

Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, wants Boris Johnson to commit to long-term investment in coal tip safety which would “help communities who have already given so much”.

It comes as a survey shows where the higher-risk tips are located, including 71 now revealed to be in the worst category.

Wales has 2,456 identified tips, of which 327 are classified as higher risk, and these have been broken down into local authority area.

It is estimated the cost of dealing with the disused coal tips over the next 15 years will be between GBP500m and GBP600m.

Drakeford said: “These sites pre-date devolution. Our funding settlement does not recognise the substantial, long-term costs of remediating and repairing these sites. Tomorrow’s spending review is an opportunity for the UK government to use its financial powers to help communities who’ve given so much to Wales and the United Kingdom during the coal-mining years.”

6.05am EDT
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Sally Weale

Teaching unions have welcomed the chancellor’s plans to end the public sector pay freeze, but say it is too little too late.

The NASUWT teachers’ union claimed that teachers had already suffered 17% erosion to their pay over the last decade, while the NAHT school leaders’ union expressed concern about how a pay rise might be funded, warning that if schools were asked to foot the additional salary bill from existing budgets headteachers would be forced to make “heart-breaking decisions”.

And Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, asked the government to honour its promise to raise teachers’ starting salaries to GBP30,000, a move which has also been delayed. “Over the past decade teacher pay has fallen in real terms, and this government has failed utterly to stem the tide of recently qualified teachers leaving the profession in their first five years, an exodus which can only serve to damage the education system,” he said.

Updated
at 6.24am EDT

6.01am EDT
06:01

Labour has tabled an urgent question in the Commons on “all the provisions in the upcoming budget that have been made public in advance of the chancellor’s statement”. It will be heard at 12.30pm.

5.59am EDT
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5.43am EDT
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London mayor should have delayed Ulez extension, says minister

In his LBC interview Paul Scully, who as well as being business minister is also minister for London, also criticised Sadiq Khan, the capital’s mayor, over his introduction of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez).

A massive expansion of the Ulez, which is intended to price the most pollutiing vehicles off the road, came into force on Monday.

But when it was put to Scully that the Labour mayor should have delayed the Ulez expansion, because of the impact of the pandemic, the minister agreed. Scully, who represents Sutton and Cheam in south London, said:

[Khan] should’ve delayed it. The mayor of London should have looked at the effect that it’s going to have on disabled people, for example, because the exemptions don’t cover all disabled people. He should be putting more money into a scrappage scheme because you need to give people alternatives. You can’t just suddenly bring a charge in when there’s no realistic alternative for a number of people.

5.09am EDT
05:09

Plan B could stifle economic recovery, minister suggests

There are two reports out this morning suggesting that ministers are reluctant to implement their Covid plan B because they are worried about the impact on the economy.

Plan B is set out in the winter Covid plan (pdf) published in September and it comprises four elements: warning the public of the increased risk (something which the government is arguably already doing); mandating vaccine passports for some settings; mandating face coverings in some settings; and possibly asking people to work from home.

In his London Playbook briefing for Politico, Alex Wickham says leaked government papers say plan B could cost the economy up to GBP18bn. Wickham writes:

An internal Treasury impact assessment seen by Playbook warned that moving to plan B would cost the economy between GBP11bn and GBP18bn in the period up until March 2022 — or more than GBP800m per week. The document warns the main hit will be on businesses as millions of people go back to working from home. WFH is envisaged to have a moderately positive impact on reducing transmission.

And in the Daily Telegraph Ben Riley-Smith says an internal assessment by the culture department suggests vaccine passports would be costly and counterproductive. Riley-Smith reports:

Vaccine passports could fuel the spread of Covid-19 by encouraging people to go to poorly ventilated pubs instead of large venues, the government’s own impact assessment has warned.

The policy would also slash turnover for the organisers of events required to use vaccine passports, and necessitate the hiring of thousands of new stewards which may be hard to deliver, it was concluded.

In an interview with LBC this morning Paul Scully, the business minister, was asked about the Playbook leak. He said he had only just been told about it, but he did suggest a move to plan B might stifle the recovery. Asked about plan B, he said:

We don’t want to be stifling the recovery, so no sense that there’s anything at the moment that’s suggesting plan B is needed ….

Although case numbers have gone up, hospitalisations haven’t gone up in the same proportion, so there is still a suggestion there that we weaken the link through the excellent vaccination programme and the booster programme.

Updated
at 5.57am EDT

4.35am EDT
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Owen Paterson faces 30-day suspension from Commons for ‘egregious’ breach of lobbying rules

Owen Paterson, who served as Northern Ireland secretary and environment secretary when David Cameron was PM, repeatedly used his position as an MP to help two companies that were paying him, a report from the Commons standards committee says.

The committee has described this as “an egregious case of paid advocacy” and recommended that Paterson should be suspended from the Commons for 30 days. Its recommendation is almost certain to be adopted by the Commons as a whole.

The committee accepted that Paterson did not think he was doing anything wrong and that he thought his lobbying on behalf of the two companies he was working for – Randox, a clinical diagnostics company, and Lynn’s Country Foods, a processor and distributor of meat products – was in the public interest. But the report says he was still breaking Commons rules, which say MPs must not lobby on behalf of a paying client.

Here are extracts from the report’s conclusion.

Mr Paterson has an evident passion for dairy and farming matters, based on his undoubted expertise. We do not doubt that he sincerely believes that he has acted properly. Mr Paterson is clearly convinced in his own mind that there could be no conflict between his private interest and the public interest in his actions in this case. But it is this same conviction that meant that Mr Paterson failed to establish the proper boundaries between his private commercial work and his parliamentary activities, as set out in the guide to the gules. Mr Paterson told us multiple times in oral evidence before us that he was elected for his judgment, and that he judged that he was right to make the approaches he did. But no matter how far a member considers that the private interest of a paying client coincides with the public interest, the lobbying rules rightly prohibit members from initiating approaches or proceedings which could benefit that client. If such approaches were routinely permitted, the lobbying rules would be of little value. In failing to see the evident conflict of interest between his commercial work and his actions in this case, Mr Paterson has in turn convinced himself that he is the victim of an injustice in being investigated by the commissioner. That does not exculpate him. Being able to judge the difference between one’s private, personal interest and the public interest is at the very heart of public service and a senior member of the house with many years standing should be able to make that distinction more clearly …

This is an egregious case of paid advocacy. Previous instances have led to suspensions of 18 days, 30 days and six months. Each of Mr Paterson’s several instances of paid advocacy would merit a suspension of several days, but the fact that he has repeatedly failed to perceive his conflict of interest and used his privileged position as a member of parliament to secure benefits for two companies for whom he was a paid consultant, is even more concerning. He has brought the House into disrepute. We therefore recommend that Mr Paterson be suspended from the service of the House for 30 sitting days.

4.17am EDT
04:17

Public sector pay rises next year could be lower than inflation, minister admits

Good morning. Tomorrow Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, will announce his combined budget and spending review, but the torrent of pre-announcements continues, and overnight the Treasury has said that Sunak will end the public sector pay freeze. Here is our overnight story by my colleagues Jessica Elgot and Rowena Mason.

As the report explains, details are sketchy at this point. Sunak is not announcing pay awards for public sector workers – those will only come after the independent pay review bodies have made their recommendations, in the usual way – and ending the pay freeze for public sector workers (or some public sector workers – there were exemptions for the low paid, and for NHS staff) is not the same as awarding a real-terms increase (that would overshoot inflation).

This was confirmed by Paul Scully, the business minister on Millbank duty for the government, who in interview this morning refused to commit to public sector workers getting a pay rise above inflation. Asked if the pay increases next year would be higher than inflation, he replied:

That will be determined by the pay review bodies. The chancellor is keen to give people a rise.

They will then take that into account as they look to what should be an appropriate rise for the public sector, given the public finances.

I can’t pre-empt what they are going to do. We will see where we are come next April when the review bodies have reported.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Academics and officials from the Department of Health and Social Care give evidence to the Commons science committee about the UK’s ability to deal with global disease outbreaks.

9.30am: Prof David Cunningham, chair of the Association of Cancer Physicians, and other experts give evidence to the Commons health committee about cancer services.

11.30am: Downing Street holds its lobby briefing.

11.30am: Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

2.30pm: Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, gives evidence to the Commons defence committee on the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

2.30pm: The NFU and other farming and food industry trade bodies give evidence to the Commons environment committee about labour shortages.

2.30pm: Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, gives evidence to the Lords European affairs committee.

Afternoon: Peers debate Commons amendments to the environment bill, including the vote overturning a Lords bid to protect rivers from sewage.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

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Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com

Updated
at 5.09am EDT

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