Downing Street Says » TUC Conference

» Tuesday, September 9, 2008

TUC Conference

Asked what the Prime Minister s message at the TUC dinner would be, the PMS said that it was an after dinner speech, which would be quite informal and wide-ranging. It would be off-camera, not particularly scripted and mainly political in content.

Asked if the Prime Minister had sympathy with those Unions who were concerned that their earnings were slipping behind inflation, the PMS replied that the Prime Minister understood and appreciated the very hard work that many people in the public sector, and elsewhere, did in serving the public. It was important to remember that it was because we had taken some difficult decisions in recent years, in relation to public sector pay, that we had been able to keep inflation, and therefore interest rates, lower than they could have been.

Asked if the Prime Minister would also talk tonight about the need to keep pay under control, the PMS said that the Chancellor would be talking about the economy today.

Asked for the Prime Minister s message to Union leaders who were talking about strike action in relation to pay, the PMS repeated that the Prime Minister appreciated and understood the hard work that many people in the public sector did. However, the difficult decisions we had taken in the past had meant that inflation, and therefore interest rates, had been kept lower than they might otherwise have been.

Asked if the Prime Minister had any plans to start unpicking the pensions deal, the PMS said that we had made some significant reforms to public sector pensions a few years ago, which, from memory, knocked about 13 billion off the public sector pension bill.

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.