The Tory leadership frontrunner presented her plan as a “war on Whitehall waste” which would also cut public servants’ holiday entitlements. But he was forced to admit that he would have to replace national pay arrangements with regional awards for all public sector workers over a period of several years. The foreign secretary’s proposal for regional pay boards to set wages in line with the local cost of living has sparked fury among unions. In a warning of a standoff with Whitehall if he succeeds Boris Johnson on September 5, civil servants union PCS said it could expect “opposition every step of the way”. And Labor accused her of “declaring war on herself with her fanciful recipe for flattening”. Deputy leader Angela Rayner said Ms Truss’s plans would lead to “a race to the bottom for public sector workers’ pay and rights”. Ms Rayner warned: “Her ‘adjusted’ pay plans will reduce northerners’ pay, widening the gap that already exists. This unknown government’s commitment to leveling up is dead.” The row came as Ms Truss’s campaign to take over 10 Downing Street gained a major boost with support from third-party candidate Penny Mordant. And a poll by Redfield & Wilton Strategies suggested she could beat Sir Keir Starmer in a general election, with 37% choosing Mrs Truss as the best prime minister compared to 36% for the Labor leader. Faced with a choice between Rishi Sunak and Starmer, pollsters split 40-33 in favor of Sir Keir. Mrs Truss initially promised to save up to £8.8bn a year by “adjusting” staff wages to match the cost of living in the areas where they work. But aides were forced to amend the claim after experts at the Institute for Government pointed out that the foreign secretary’s target was almost as much as the total annual pay of civil servants of around £9bn. They clarified that the regional salaries will initially be introduced only for new starters in the civil service, yielding a small fraction of the required amounts. If successful, it will be rolled out over a number of years to cover all public sector workers, with the £8.8bn target only being met in the long term. IFG program director Alex Thomas told The Independent: “Public sector pay in 2020-21 was £235bn. Civil servants pay is around £9 billion. So if you applied it to the civil service alone, then you would save maybe 3 to 4 per cent of what the Truss campaign claimed. “This is a very long-term plan and will mean lower pay for public sector workers in areas where the cost of living and average pay are lower. “It is not a ‘war in Whitehall’. it’s a significant new approach to all public sector pay for a very long time.” Ms Truss said replacing national pay arrangements with regional awards would save private businesses in English regions from being “squeezed” as they were forced to compete with relatively high wages for state employment. And he said he would save at least another £2bn by putting a 25-day cap on the average civil servant’s annual leave, down from the current 27 days and in line with private sector averages. Efforts will also be made to move further civil servant jobs out of the capital to add to the 22,000 due to leave by 2030, saving £153m in office costs and allowances in London, he claimed. But PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “If Liz Truss is elected and tries to go ahead with these proposals, she will face opposition every step of the way. “Civil servants are not a political tool to be used and abused for one person’s ambitions. They are the hard-working people who keep the country running, day in and day out, and they deserve respect.” And Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union for senior officials, said Ms Truss’ promise showed her priorities were “completely divorced from reality”. “The fact that he has committed to moving more jobs out of London while at the same time committing to reducing regional wages for those same jobs is simply amazing,” Mr Penman said. “Instead of focusing on ensuring the public administration attracts and retains the right people to deliver the high quality public services the country relies on, Liz Truss would rather take a page out of P&O Ferries’ book and announce cuts on wages and terms and conditions in the press”. With Tory leadership election ballots landing on Conservative doorsteps from Monday, Ms Truss made a further appeal to the right-wing sympathies of the party’s 160,000 members who will choose the next prime minister. He promised to tackle “left-wing groupthink” in government by scrapping 326 posts dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion in the civil service ranks, saving up to £12m. An official strategy drawn up by Mr Johnson’s government earlier this year said the roles exist to ensure the public service effectively draws talent from “the widest possible range of geographical, social and professional backgrounds” and that “people from minority ethnic background, those living with disabilities and those who have experienced disadvantage in early life can flourish in public service.” But Ms Truss said the positions “distract from delivering on the priorities of the British people” and would instead tell officials to focus on “delivering on manifesto commitments and frontline public services”. He also promised to scrap taxpayer-funded time off for civil service workers to carry out union duties, which he said would save an extra £137m a year. He said: “As Prime Minister I will run a more agile, more efficient, more focused Whitehall that prioritizes the things that really matter to people and is laser-focused on frontline services. “There is too much bureaucracy and stale groupthink in Whitehall. If I make it to Downing Street, I will put an end to this and run a government that is relentlessly focused on delivering for the British public and delivering value for hard-working taxpayers. “I have shown in my time in government that I am prepared to take on Whitehall orthodoxy and get things done. The British people can trust me to deliver on my promises and tackle the cost of living straight away.” Government efficiency minister Jacob Rees-Mogg – a prominent supporter of the Foreign Secretary’s bid for the Tory leadership – said he was “delighted” by her determination to continue his work to stamp out “woke indoctrination” within the public administration. But Mr Penman said Ms Truss was recycling old Conservative policies that had been tried and failed in the 1980s and 2010s. “Most civil servants would welcome private sector salary comparisons because the government’s own figures show that, at almost every level, they are paid less than their private sector contemporaries,” he said. “As the government faces the huge challenges posed by a new war on continental Europe and recovers from the backlog of Covid, what we need from a Prime Minister are solutions for the 21st century, not recycled, failed policies and tired rhetoric from the 1980s ».
