Civil Service Pay

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) on securing the debate.

I pay tribute to the unions that are working tirelessly on behalf of their members in their fight to secure fair deals on pay. Many Wirral West residents work in the civil service and a number of them—members of the PCS—have written to me in recent weeks. They have expressed their frustration and dismay that the civil service pay remit for 2022-23 limited pay increases to just 2% to 3%. They have also rightly pointed that, at the time, this

“represented a significant, real-terms pay cut given that inflation was already running at around 9%”.

We must also remember that the pay remit for 2022-23 has been set against a backdrop of a decade of real-terms pay cuts. According to PCS, as a result of pay being frozen and capped, the living standards of many of its members have fallen by about 20% in real terms in the last decade. The average PCS member is worse off by £2,300 a year since 2011.  When the remit was announced in March last year, PCS was right to describe it as

“an insult to PCS members who helped to keep the country running during the pandemic”.

As I wrote in an email to the Chancellor just last week, the rhetoric of Ministers has not always recognised the dedication of civil servants, many of whom are still dealing with the impact of the covid-19 crisis, including those dealing with backlogs in the Home Office and criminal courts.

The PCS survey results are shocking, with 18% of members admitting to missing work because they cannot afford transport or fuel to get there; 37% of respondents saying that they are looking for a job outside the civil service and considering a career change for the good of their health; and 85% of members saying that the cost of living crisis has affected their physical or mental health. Shockingly, figures also suggest that 40% of PCS members are using food banks, and 47% are claiming universal credit because their pay is so low. It is therefore incredibly disappointing that the Government have ruled out a resettlement of the pay offer for the current financial year.

PCS is calling for a 10% pay uplift, an end to the pensions overpayment of 2%—which it says costs civil servants an average of £500 a year—and guarantees on the protection of the existing compensation scheme terms and job security. Constituents who have written to me have been clear that they

“would much prefer a negotiated settlement with the employer than to have to take…industrial action, particularly at a time when the cost of living is as high as it is.”

As we have seen elsewhere in the public sector, the Government’s refusal to pay workers the fair wage they deserve has left them feeling that they have no choice other than to go on strike to get their message across.

When it comes to pay remit guidance for 2023-24, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has said that it will be put together

“in the context of higher inflation”,

and that he would

“expect some of that to be recognised in the sort of pay settlement”

that the Government are able to give civil servants. Nevertheless, he has tempered expectations, suggesting that civil servants will be left disappointed once again by the Government.

That is not good enough. The Government must ensure that civil servants receive the fair pay rise that they deserve. The Government’s attack on the rights of working people is wholly unacceptable, with the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill leaving some civil servants, as well as workers in key sectors, potentially at risk of losing their jobs as a result of industrial action agreed in a democratic ballot. That is very draconian indeed. It is a pernicious piece of legislation and it must be withdrawn immediately.

Will the Minister also address the issue of job cuts in the civil service? Last May, the Government announced that there would be 91,000 job cuts in the civil service within three years. The Prime Minister initially scrapped those plans when he came to office, but there were reports recently that there are still likely to be significant job cuts in the civil service, although no numbers have been confirmed yet. The Government should not need reminding that job cuts in the civil service would be detrimental to the quality and availability of the public services on which we all rely. As Amy Leversidge, the assistant general secretary of the FDA union said during a recent meeting of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the Government

“cannot expect everything that was delivered with over 400,000 civil servants to be done with 91,000 less.”

Will the Minister commit to protecting jobs in the civil service? Will he revisit the 2022-23 civil service pay settlement in the light of the cost of living crisis and rising inflation? Finally, will he give a reassurance that hard-working civil servants will receive the pay and conditions they deserve in the next financial year?