A spokesman for her leadership campaign said there had been a “deliberate misrepresentation of our campaign” but confirmed she was abandoning plans for regional pay boards for civil servants or public sector workers. Red Wall MPs including Jacob Young and Richard Holden expressed concern over the policy announced overnight, as did former cabinet minister Simon Hart, who said it would amount to cuts of almost £3,000 for workers in Wales. Her rival Rishi Sunak’s campaign said the £8.8bn savings in wages outside London, as outlined in a Truss announcement on Monday night, could only be made by cuts across the public sector, including teachers, nurses and the armed forces, averaging around £1,500 each for employees outside the south-east of England. By midday Tuesday, the Truss campaign admitted it would drop the plan and said it had no intention of cutting wages. “Current levels of public sector pay will absolutely be maintained,” a Truss spokesman said. “Anything we suggest otherwise is simply wrong. “Our frontline workers are the bedrock of society and there will be no proposal for regional pay boards for civil servants or public sector workers.” The first major blunder by Truss, who is the favorite to win the race, excited some MPs who supported Sunak – with one calling it a “taxing moment of dementia” referring to the time when former Conservative prime minister Theresa May was forced to turn her social networks. care policy. After the policy was announced overnight, Ben Houchen, the mayor of Tees Valley and a supporter of Rishi Sunak, said there was no way the figure would be reached without pay cuts outside London leading to an upward trend. “Actually speechless,” he tweeted. “There is simply no way to do this without a huge pay cut for 5.5 million people, including our nurses, police and armed forces outside London. So much we’ve worked for in places like Teesside would be undone.” Holden, the MP for Durham North West, said Mr Truss should “drop the politics” saying the only way to deliver savings would be cuts to the pay of doctors and nurses and police. Chris Clarkson, the MP for Heywood and Middleton, said: “I’m not sure a promise to cut people’s pay based on where they live will survive the first contact with focus groups, let alone the reality.” Young, the MP for Redcar, tweeted: “Doubt this is the vision of ‘hope’ Penny Mordaunt talked about yesterday… Hope for northerners cut? [Truss] must withdraw from this policy as a matter of urgency.” Jacob Rees-Mogg had earlier rejected Truss’ plans to cut the pay of public sector workers outside the capital by introducing regional pay boards, but then refused to say how billions in promised savings could be made. The original policy announcement from Truss said it could be “adopted for all public sector workers in the long term”. Sunak’s campaign said that to achieve the £8.8bn savings, civil servant wages would have to be halved. The policy is believed to have been based on a report by the Taxpayers’ Alliance which looked at the entire public sector workforce with no exceptions. Signs that the policy was in trouble began on Tuesday morning when Rees-Mogg, a Truss backer and minister responsible for public service efficiency, said it was “not the plan at the moment” to cut pay for wider public sector. £8.8bn savings promised by Truss. “The conversation right now is around civil servants,” he said. In the original version, which proposed regional pay boards, Truss said it would “adjust payments to the cost of living where public servants actually work” and this would save up to £8.8 billion. Experts said this amount is not only affordable for civil servants. Alex Thomas, program director at the Institute for Government, said the entire annual salary of civil servants was around £9 billion. Labor said the original plan would mean a £7.1bn hit to local economies across Yorkshire, the North and the Midlands. Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said: “Liz Truss is a liability who has remained in this Tory cabinet for nearly a decade, in which the Tories fueled a cost-of-living crisis.” Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said: “To turn to a multi-billion pound policy five weeks before he even came into office must be a new record. We cannot let Liz Truss run the country with the same incompetence she ran her leadership campaign. The British people must have their say in a general election.”
