Downing Street Says » Teacher’s Pay

» Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Teacher’s Pay

Put that the Prime Minister wanted pay to stay under the inflation target, the PMS said that the Prime Minister had said that he wanted settlements that were consistent with meeting our inflation target and that were affordable within departmental spending plans, but also, that we wanted to see an increasing move towards multi-year pay settlements in the public sector. That was why the Prime Minister would welcome what is a fair and balanced settlement for teachers, over three years, which would help lock in economic stability in the years ahead.

Put that the police might have had a better deal if their pay rise had been over three years, the PMS said that obviously it was not for him to pre-empt negotiations. In relation to last year, we had to take some very difficult decisions and we had to stage a number of public sector pay settlements, including the police. That was because, this time last year, we were facing a situation where by inflation was close to and, in some months, went above our inflation target. Therefore, we had to take some particularly tough action last year in order to get inflation under control. Inflation was now back under control but obviously one always had to be vigilant; we were close to the 2% inflation target and that was the situation at the moment.

Put that unions argued that the measure of inflation was critical when negotiating a pay deal and asked what the Prime Minister’s position was on that, the PMS replied that the Prime Minister’s position was that our inflation target was based on the Consumer Price Index, which was the internationally recognised measure regarding inflation, and was consistent with what was used in the US, areas whose currency was the Euro and some other major economies. We had seen a settlement today, in relation to teachers, which was consistent with meeting our inflation target.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.