The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said his party will have to ‘go at pace’ to ‘rebuild’ public services but stressed it must obey ‘strong fiscal rules’.
Sir Keir Starmer has refused to say whether a Labour government would ignore public sector pay rise recommendations from independent advisory panels.
It comes after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warned he will not shy away from making decisions “people may not like” to control inflation, having repeatedly refused to commit to accepting pay body recommendations to increase the wages of workers such as nurses and teachers.
Labour leader Sir Keir, asked whether his party would take a different view on pay advice, said he recognises that workers are going through a “real squeeze” during the cost-of-living crisis which is being fuelled by stubbornly high inflation.
Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation remained at 8.7% in May despite experts forecasting it would fall.
Starmer said Labour would have to “go at pace” to “repair and rebuild” the country’s finances but stressed that shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’ “strong fiscal rules” could not be broken when paying for public sector improvements.
Ms Reeves has set the fiscal rule that debt must be falling as a share of national income after five years of a Labour government.
She told the PA news agency this week that her party would negotiate “fair and affordable” deals with workers but did not rule out going against pay body recommendations.
Sir Keir Starmer, asked at the New Statesman’s Politics Live Conference about Labour’s stance on pay body advice, said: “The first thing about public sector pay is we need to understand why people want their wages to go up because, for most people, their wages haven’t gone up in material terms for 13 years.
“And if your wages haven’t gone up in material terms but every bill has gone up, there is a real squeeze on.
“The failure to grow the economy and the additional damage that Liz Truss did is the cause of that.
“But I’m not going to hide from this. If we are privileged enough to come into power at the next election … we’re going to inherit a real mess – a very badly damaged economy, public services that aren’t on their knees but are on their face, the NHS in particular.
“And a sense that we’ve got to go at pace to try and repair and rebuild, and run towards the future which is available for us as a country.
“And Rachel’s been clear that that will require us to have strong fiscal rules which we’re not going to break. But we urgently need to get on with the task now of picking the country up, rebuilding and moving forwards.”
Starmer accused Mr Sunak of showing himself to be “out of touch” with his recent comments about the pressure stubborn inflation and rising interest rates is putting on the public.
The Opposition leader said he is not willing to criticise the Prime Minister for being wealthy or for where he chooses to send his children to school but that he does take exception to the Conservative’s comments on the cost-of-living crisis.
“Some of the language he has used in the last week has been extraordinary: ‘I’m on it’, ‘Hold your nerve’, or recently telling the country to ‘understand the economic context’,” Sir Keir Starmer told a central London audience on Tuesday.
“The idea that people who are struggling every day do not understand the economic context they are in is, frankly, real evidence of how out of touch he is.”
You may also like: Bill of Rights will be ditched, says Justice Secretary