Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will estimate the cost to the public purse of a public sector pay award in line with (a) CPI and (b) RPI taking account of (i) income tax, (ii) national insurance contributions and (iii) employee and employer public sector pension contributions.

The cost of such a pay award would depend on a range of factors including the size and shape of the public sector workforce, what specific measure of inflation is used and over what period, as well as the implementation date for the pay award for each workforce. The paybill for the public sector can be found in the published ONS Blue Book and totalled £179bn in 2016-17: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/datasets/bluebook