Chancellor Rishi Sunak will hit every public sector worker earning over £18,000 in England with a real-terms pay cut this year, including at least 12,200 workers in Hallam.

This new analysis by Labour has revealed that Sheffield Hallam has one of the highest number of public sector workers affected by this pay freeze, second only to the constituency of Oxford East.

In the Government’s Spending Review on 25 November, the Chancellor announced a ‘pay freeze’ for all public sector workers earning above £24,000 in 2021-22. NHS workers weren’t included, while those earning less than £24,000 were promised “a fixed increase of £250”.

Taking into account inflation over the next fiscal year, that means every non-NHS public sector worker earning over £18,000 will actually get a real-terms pay cut – the teachers, police officers and Armed Forces personnel on the front line of the battle against Covid-19.

On top of the pay freeze, the Spending Review also contained a one-billion-pound council tax bombshell hidden in the small print and a cut to Universal Credit that will hit those who can least afford it.

This triple hammer blow is completely irresponsible when the economy is so fragile. Making people worried about making ends meet will pull spending out of local high streets and small businesses, damaging consumer confidence at the very moment the Government should be building it up.

Hundreds of my constituents have gotten in touch over the past months, concerned about what this pay freeze will mean for them. So these figures confirm what we already knew, that front line public sector workers in Hallam are being made to pay for a crisis, whilst Tory donors are handed huge multi-million pound contracts. Once again it is one rule for the government, and another rule for everyone else.

I will continue to do everything I can to speak up for the people of Hallam, and make sure those that have done so much for our constituency, and city, during this crisis are not the ones made to pay for the government’s mistakes.

NOTES:

The Resolution Foundation have calculated that 2.6m public sector workers will be subject to the pay freeze, with 2.9m exempt. This implies that 47% of all public sector workers will be affected by the freeze.

Constituency-level data on the public sector workforce sourced from the Annual Population Survey via Nomis tells us the overall number of public sector workers in each constituency. This figure has been adjusted in line with the Resolution Foundation estimate that 47% of public sector workers are affected nationally.