As
many of you may have seen, our current MP has published literature and emails
claiming that he stopped ‘Tory Plans’ to introduce regional pay. These
proposals were raised in 2012 and would have seen local public sector pay
linked to regional private sector pay.
I have
considered carefully whether or not to respond to these inaccurate claims but
felt in the end the people of this constituency deserved to know the facts.
The issue
revolves around the linking of public sector pay to regional private sector
pay. Public sector pay is currently set
centrally but the proposed change would have adversely affected public sector
workers in lower paid areas such as Cornwall. It was the last Labour Government
who introduced regional pay into our Court system and the reforms proposed in
2012 were an extension of this policy.
However, I can
state that the Conservative Party are not and will not be introducing regional
pay. This is desperate scaremongering by our Liberal Democrat MP and it is really
disappointing to see him using our hard-working nurses and teachers to play party
politics in this way.
Personally I
did not support these proposals when they were first mooted and I still don’t.
The argument
for such a policy has two main thrusts.
Firstly, linking the two pay scales would help the private sector to be
more competitive. Secondly, a lower
average wage would allow for the creation of more public sector jobs for the
same total wage bill.
For me this is
the not the answer, it is a backward and punitive step that would negatively
impact many people in this Constituency. The way to address the underlying
issue is to work to raise private sector wages in order to close the pay gap.
This is something I care about deeply and would be one of my top priorities if
I am elected.
Conservative
MPs in Cornwall have confirmed to me that it was in fact Conservatives in
Government, who persuaded Her Majesty’s Treasury, where these proposals
started, that these proposals were unacceptable to places like Cornwall and as
a result they were dropped.
Far from this
being just a Conservative policy, this was just as much a policy promoted by
senior Liberal Democrats, including the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny
Alexander, who championed the regional pay proposals in 2012 as demonstrated
here http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/release-letters-reveals-strong-lib-2052415
It appears
that, as is typical of our Lib Dem MP, he is spinning stories to suit his own
anti Tory agenda. He also conveniently ignores the point that he has supported
the Conservatives in Government, voting with the Tories 95% of the time – a
record even some Conservative backbenchers would be proud of.
Sadly, this
part of Cornwall has suffered for too long under the ineffective political
representation of the Lib Dems as we have watched our towns decline and good
jobs disappear. I am sure we would prefer that our MP focussed on growing our
local economy and working to raise local wages rather than trying to score
political points at every opportunity.
