Brandon Lewis has defended Liz Truss’ now-abandoned policy of cutting civil service and public sector pay outside London, saying the figures were “extrapolated” and insisting the policy was never about cutting the pay of public sector workers.
Truss had claimed that the introduction of regional pay scales, which she said would “match pay to the cost of living where civil servants actually work”, could save up to £8.8 billion a year.
But Truss was forced into a policy U-turn, which was met with a furious outcry from Tory MPs across the country.
Monday night’s announcement drew fierce opposition from senior Tories, who said it would “level” the nation by leaving nurses, police officers and teachers worse off.
Truss insisted his policy had been “misrepresented”.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today program on Wednesday who Truss believed had misrepresented his policy, Lewis, the Tory party chairman, said: “We saw a number of people extrapolating figures and talking about pay cuts for several people who were never outline of the policy and what Liz was looking at.
“Obviously, what we see during these campaigns is that people set policies. We’ve obviously seen Rishi [Sunak] he floats ideas and then changes about eight or nine times over the last few weeks.
“But what Liz outlined yesterday is the wider package, the issue around waste management in Whitehall… reducing the civil service, the increase of 91,000 that we’ve seen over the last period and making sure that the money that is spent, taxpayers’ money is spent on front line services.
“But it was never, at any time, about cutting the pay of public sector workers who have been so brilliant through Covid and work over the last few years.”
But when asked why the press release sent out by Truss’s campaign leadership team claimed the move could save up to £8.8bn a year – a figure that was only correct if they included public sector pay cuts, Lewis said: “The wording here is important is the word ‘if’, that was not something that was ever proposed…Liz made it very clear yesterday that this is not it is a policy that is being carried forward.”
Lewis’ comments came after Truss was forced to make a U-turn on the policy, which drew an angry outcry from Tory MPs across the country.
Ben Houchen, the Tory mayor of Tees Valley, said he was “speechless” and there was no way the figure could be achieved without pay cuts outside London that could be scaled up.
“Actually speechless,” Houchen tweeted. “There’s simply no way to do it without a massive pay cut for 5.5 million people, including nurses, police officers and our armed forces outside London. As much as we’ve worked in places like Teesside would fall apart.”
A spokesman for Truss’s campaign said there had been a “deliberate misrepresentation of our campaign”, although he could not say what exactly was misrepresented.
“Current levels of public sector pay will absolutely remain,” the spokesman said. “Anything that suggests otherwise is simply wrong.
“Our front line personal worker is the bedrock of society and there will be no proposals put forward to regional pay boards for civil servants or public sector workers.”
Sunak, his leadership opponent, said claims of £8.8bn savings could only be achieved with cuts across the public sector and estimated a cut of around £1,500 each for employees outside the south- east of england