Conservative leadership contender Liz Truss has abandoned plans to cut pay for public sector workers outside London and the south east after a huge backlash against the policy from Tory MPs.
Critics in her own party accused the foreign secretary of planning to make millions of nurses, police officers and teachers poorer.
Tees Valley Conservative Mayor Ben Houchen, who supports Ms Truss’s opponent Rishi Sunak, said he was “really speechless” at her presentation to party members electing the next prime minister.
The proposal was a “time bomb” that risked costing the party the next general election, he said.
Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, also referred to Theresa May’s election campaign when the former prime minister infamously reversed her social care proposals – dubbed the “dementia tax”.
“What if this kind of fundamental mistake was made during an election campaign? 2017 all over again,” he said. “Bad judgement, lack of detail and a gift to Labour. I hope we will see a complete change and this policy will be abandoned”.
The U-turn, just 12 hours after she announced her plans, is a blow to Mrs Truss, widely seen as the front-runner to replace Boris Johnson.
The policy for regional pay boards to set wages in line with the local cost of living was announced as part of plans for a “war on Whitehall waste” which will save the Treasury billions of pounds.
But within hours Mrs Truss faced a furious backlash from Tory MPs from across England.
Richard Holden, a 2019 Tory MP and another Sunack supporter, said Mrs Truss should immediately scrap the plans, which he said would “kill” the government’s equalization agenda.
Steve Double – Tory MP and Sunack supporter – added: “This is a terrible idea and would do a lot of damage to public services in Cornwall. It’s leveling down, not up.”
Ms Truss later claimed her proposals had been misinterpreted. She said: “It was never my intention to change the conditions of teachers and nurses. But what I want to be clear about is that I will not be going ahead with regional pay councils.
However, the message sent by the Truss campaign made it clear that the proposed savings would only be achieved if the policy was applied to all public sector pay. The proposals sparked an angry reaction from unions. Prospect’s general secretary, Mike Clancy, accused Mrs Truss of planning “more of the same economically illiterate and offensive ideological nonsense that this government has been spewing in recent years”.
Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, said: “As the government faces the enormous challenges posed by a new war in continental Europe and recovers from the Covid backlog, what we need from a prime minister, are solutions for the 21st century, not recycled failed policies and tired rhetoric from the 1980s.” TUC general secretary Francis O’Grady welcomed the U-turn, saying that “in the middle of the cost of living crisis, the first priority for our next Prime Minister is to raise wages.”
Labor also said the idea would sound the death knell for the government’s program to “raise levels”, instead widening the regional income gap and creating a race to the bottom of public sector pay.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Truss supporter, told Sky News that the policy debate was focused on civil servants and it was “not the plan at the moment” to cut pay for the rest of the public sector.
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