Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the Written Statement of 3 February 2021, HCWS756 on Billing Authorities Update, what steps he is taking to measure the impact of the 2 per cent average pay award in the Civil Service Pay Remit guidance 2022 to 2023 on attracting high quality applicants to the Civil Service.

Pay below the Senior Civil Service is delegated to departments. It is for departments to decide on their pay award and how it is structured in light of their own affordability and priorities including considering any recruitment and retention challenges, and to negotiate with their trade unions. The impact on recruitment and retention should be considered by departments when determining their pay award. The pay remit guidance is a cost control document and allows departments to seek further flexibility for a pay award above the headline award, as demonstrated by recent pay deals in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Ministry of Justice.

This year’s pay remit guidance is framed by the commitment of this Government to deliver on its extensive agenda that will require reform of the capacity and capability of the Civil Service. It is important that public sector pay awards are affordable, as well as fair to both staff and the taxpayer.

The pay remit guidance considers economic conditions while balancing the need for sustainable public finances. The government will continue to prioritise the lowest paid, and has accepted the Low Pay Commission’s recommendations to increase the National Living Wage by 6.6% to £9.50 per hour from April 2022.

The Cabinet Office publishes summary figures on salaries across the Civil Service as part of the Civil Service Statistics publications. Median salaries by grade and department since 2010 can be found in Table 25 of this publication:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/civil-service-statistics.

The Cabinet Office does not hold complete data on the delegated pay structures across all Departments, such as ‘spine points’. These have previously been part of the Civil Service pay framework, but are no longer a feature of the pay system for most Civil Service organisations.