Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:16 pm on 5 July 2017.
Well, Llywydd, I certainly agree that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should listen to his Cabinet colleagues and end the damaging public sector pay cap. You heard the First Minister make exactly these points yesterday. We know that public sector workers, since 2010, have seen average pay fall by 4.5 per cent in real terms, and that is damaging both to them and to their families, but also to the communities in which they live, because it suppresses effective demand in the economy, and why I said, in my first answer to Jeremy Miles, that the policy of austerity is an inherently flawed policy. You cannot cut your way out of a depression, and that’s what this Government attempted to do, and, in doing so, it simply added to the problem, rather than trying to solve it. An end to the public sector pay cap would be a very valuable way of stimulating the economy as a whole.