Oliver Dowden Skewered By Laura Kuenssberg Over 'Misleading' Figure Used In Strikes Row

Cabinet minister Oliver Dowden has clashed with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg over the claim that granting public sector pay rises would make households £1,000 worse off.

The government is grappling with industrial action on multiple fronts as rail workers, nurses and postal workers all go on strike to demand better pay and working conditions amid the cost of living crisis.

Ministers have accepted the recommendations of independent pay review bodies – but they fall well short of the unions’ demands.

One of the arguments deployed by ministers is that giving public sector workers the pay rise they want would cost £28 billion — or £1,000 for every UK household.

However, the figures have been debunked as too high by the BBC and other organisations, including the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

According to the BBC’s calculations, the public sector pay bill for the UK’s 5.7 million employees was around £233 billion last year.

If you take into account forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility that puts inflation at 10% for 2022-23, that means a pay rise in line with that figure would cost about £23 billion.

If you divide £23 billion by the 28 million households in the UK, it equates to about £820 per household — not £1,000.

In an interview with the he BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme, Dowden defended the £1,000 figure, arguing that it was “robust”.

He said nurses’ demands for a pay hike of 5% above the RPI inflation rate – which works out at 19% – are “simply not affordable”.

“If we applied this across the board, that would cost families £1,000 each and it would also add to inflation and make us all poorer in the long run,” he said.

Challenging that figure, Kuenssberg pointed out that the government had used inflation of 11% for the month of October rather than an average figure.

But Dowden said the government may even be “underestimating” the cost.

“What I can tell you is our number is justified on the basis of taking the inflation number, which is what the unions are asking for and projecting it forward to next year,” he said.

He denied the figure was inaccurate, adding: “I spent a lot of yesterday and the day before discussing exactly these numbers. These are robust numbers.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Dowden called on nurses to halt their strike planned for next Tuesday.

Ambulance crews in England are also due to walk out for two days on December 21 and 28 in a row over pay, while border staff represented by the Public and Commercial Services Union will strike for eight days from December 23 until New Year’s Eve.

He said he believed the government had been “reasonable” in its approach to the unions.

“We’re trying to be reasonable, we’re trying to be proportionate and we’re trying to be fair,” he told Kuenssberg.

“But in return, the unions need to be fair and reasonable. They should call off these strikes and give people a break.”

The Cabinet minister later responded to reports that the army will be drafted in to over for striking workers over the festive period.

Asked on Times Radio whether it was fair that some servicemen and women would have to use their downtime to fill in for striking workers, he said: “No, it’s not fair at all.

“And that’s why I would urge the unions to call off those strikes and to give the military a break this Christmas.

“It is of course the case that under different political persuasions, governments have used the army in extremis.

“And it is an extreme situation in relation to having an ambulance strike, for example, and that’s why we’re asking them to do this. And I know the sacrifice that they are making in fulfilment of their duty.”