Boris Johnson’s government has been accused of “abandoning” its own workforce after the announcement of an average pay rise for civil servants of less than a third of inflation.
The civil service pay remit guidance released by Cabinet Office minister Heather Wheeler authorises annual increases averaging up to 2 per cent, with departments able to make the case for an additional 1 per cent on top in exceptional cases.
The guidance comes on the eve of massive hikes in energy prices and council tax, at a time when CPI inflation stands at 6.2 per cent and is forecast to peak at 8.7 per cent later in the year.
The general secretary of senior civil service union the FDA, Dave Penman, said ministers had taken a decision to “ignore the unprecedented cost of living crisis that is already eroding civil servants’ spending power”.
After a decade of pay restraint following the 2008 financial crash and two years of emergency conditions during the Covid pandemic, the below-inflation rise will hit morale and make it more difficult for the civil service to recruit and retain talented people, he warned.
“On Monday, the governor of the Bank of England predicted that we will see a ‘historic shock’ to incomes in the UK this year, unprecedented since the 1970s,” said Mr Penman. “The Office for Budget Responsibility last week suggested that UK household real income this year would contract at the sharpest rate since records began in the 1950s.
“Against this backdrop, the government has decided to abandon its own workforce and make no attempt to soften the blow to civil servants, who have spent the last two years helping the country through the health and economic emergencies.
“Ministers are running around with their fingers in their ears trying to pretend it’s business as usual.”
The new guidance will see civil service salary levels fall even further behind the private sector, he warned.
And he added: “Unfortunately, ministers have completely failed to see the damage this will do to morale and the civil service’s ability to attract new talent required to deliver high quality public services.”
In a statement to the Commons, Ms Wheeler insisted that the government wanted to “reward hard-working staff fairly”.
But she added: “We must also balance pay settlements with our macroeconomic objectives and the need to invest in high quality public services.”
She said that civil servants enjoy access to a generous pension scheme and said the rise would ensure “broad parity” with the private sector.
Departments and quangos are to be allowed to go beyond the 3 per cent limit in order to fulfil legal requirements to pay at least the national living wage, which increases by 6.6 per cent to £9.50 per hour from April.
