FURIOUS Tory MPs have lashed out at plans by Liz Truss to link public sector pay to the regional location of workers.
Yesterday the wannabe PM vowed to cut down on Whitehall waste by making £8.8 billion of savings.
Liz Truss’s plans to cut down on Whitehall waste have been slammed as anti-levelling up
Liz Truss has pledged to replace national pay scales with regional ones
But to do that Ms Truss admitted she would replace civil servant national pay scales with regional pay boards.
The boards would determine earnings based on the standards of living in local areas where workers reside.
This morning Tory MPs slammed the idea as anti-levelling up, arguing it would widen regional inequality and punish hard-up Brits in deprived areas the most.
A Rishi Sunak campaign source told Trending In The News: “You can imagine this on the Labour and Lib Dem leaflets in a general election. It’s going to cost a lot of votes.”
Critics pointed out that in order to make the £8.8 billion of savings Ms Truss promised, she would have to slash the pay of public sector workers beyond the civil service.
To make the numbers work, millions of heroic nurses, police officers and members of the armed forces would have their pay packets cut by a whooping £1,500.
Conservative poster boy for levelling up, Ben Houchen, slammed the plan as a “ticking time bomb that will explode ahead of the next general election”.
The Tees Valley Mayor said: “There is simply no way you can do this without a massive pay cut for 5.5m people including nurses, police officers and our armed forces outside London.
“Liz Truss’s campaign is explicit that their savings target is only possible ‘if the system were to be adopted for all public sector workers’.”
Tory MP Steve Double said: “This is a terrible idea and would be hugely damaging to public services in Cornwall where we already struggle to recruit NHS staff.”
Labour and trade unions also joined in the avalanche of condemnation this morning.
Angela Rayner said: “This wannabe PM is stuck in the past, fighting old battles and promising a race to the bottom on public sector workers’ pay and rights.”
