The Governor of the Bank of England (Frank Augstein/ PA)
(Picture: PA Archive)Did you know that the Government is running an incomes policy, in which it seeks to place a cap on people’s wages in the public sector regardless of what is happening elsewhere in the economy? Not officially, perhaps, but the truth is that pay in the public sector is rapidly falling behind pay in the private sector.
In the three months to September, private-sector pay rose 6.8 per cent compared with the same period last year. In the public sector, the rise amounted to a mere 2.4 per cent. Workers in the public sector are thus suffering relatively more as a consequence of the cost-of-living crisis. One result is an increase in strike action. Another, longer-term, might be an inability to recruit into public services.
