Brandon Lewis has defended Liz Truss’s now-abandoned policy to cut civil service and public sector pay outside London, saying the figures were “extrapolated” and insisting the policy was never about reducing the pay of public sector workers.
Truss had claimed the introduction of regional pay boards, which she said would “tailor pay to the cost of living where civil servants actually work”, could save up to £8.8bn a year.
But Truss was forced to do a U-turn on the policy, which was met by a furious outcry from Conservative MPs across the country.
The announcement on Monday night met fierce opposition from senior Tories, who said that it would be “levelling down” the nation by leaving nurses, police officers and teachers worse off.
Truss insisted her policy had been “misrepresented”.
When asked on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday who Truss believed had misrepresented her policy, Lewis, the Conservative party chairman, said: “We saw a number of people extrapolate figures, and talk about pay cuts for various people which was never the outline of the policy and what Liz was looking at.
“Obviously what we do see during these campaigns is people setting out policies. We’ve obviously seen Rishi [Sunak] float ideas and then change around eight or nine times over the last couple of weeks.
“But what Liz was outlining yesterday is the wider package, the issue around dealing with waste in Whitehall … reducing the civil service, the 91,000 increase we’ve seen over the last period and making sure that money that is spent, taxpayers’ money is spent on frontline services.
“But it was never about, at any point, reducing the pay of the public sector workers who’ve been so brilliant through Covid and the work over the last few years.”
But when asked why the press release sent by Truss’s leadership campaign team stated that the measure could save up to £8.8bn a year, a figure correct only if public sector pay cuts were included, Lewis said: “The wording in there that’s important is the word ‘if’, that was not something that was ever proposed … Liz made it very clear yesterday this is not a policy that is being taken forward.”
Lewis’s comments came after Truss was forced to do a U-turn on the policy, which was met by a furious outcry from Conservative MPs across the country.
Ben Houchen, the Tory mayor of Tees Valley, said he had been left “speechless” and that there was was no way the figure could be achieved without pay cuts outside London that would hit levelling up.
“Actually speechless,” Houchen tweeted. “There is simply no way you can do this without a massive pay cut for 5.5 million people including nurses, police officers and our armed forces outside London. So much that we’ve worked for in places like Teesside would be undone.”
A spokesperson for Truss’s campaign said there had been a “wilful misrepresentation of our campaign”, although was unable to say what exactly was misrepresented.
“Current levels of public sector pay will absolutely be maintained,” the spokesperson said. “Anything to suggest otherwise is simply wrong.
“Our hardworking frontline staff are the bedrock of society and there will be no proposal taken forward on regional pay boards for civil servants or public sector workers.”
Sunak, her leadership opponent, said the claims of saving £8.8bn could be achieved only with cuts across the whole public sector, and estimated a cut of about £1,500 each for employees outside south-east England.
