Labour leader defends freeze on public sector pay

Ed Milliband, the leader of the opposition party, has defended their decision to support the government’s plans to freeze wages in the public sector.

The governments plans for public sector wages were announced in 2010 when they decided to freeze pay rises for two years. Last November they announced a further restriction of 1% on pay rises for the next two years, leading up to 2015.

Ed Milliband argued that Labour were right to support the proposals as they protected jobs in the public sector.
The shadow chancellor Ed Balls suggested that whilst the economy continues to face the problems, public sector pay rises need to be restrained. He went on to argue that they wanted to put people who are out of work ahead of those in work.

However, some Labour MPs and some unions have since criticised the position of the Labour leadership. Some MPs suggest that it shows weakness, whilst the Unions argue that Labour were now copying the Tories on a number of issues and if they chose to confront the government over the pay freeze, they would now be facing the Labour front bench as well.

Ed Milliband was keen to defend their position and argued that the government was right to prioritise the protection of jobs over pay rises.

The deputy leader for the Labour party Harriet Harman argued that they were still against the spending cuts being made by the government.

She said: “It’s simply not the case that we’re accepting the government’s spending cuts. That couldn’t be further from the truth. We think that the government’s austerity spending cuts are making a bad situation worse; we think that they’re too far and too fast. And actually we’re fighting the cuts.”

She went on to indicate that their support for the coalition governments plans to freeze public sector pay was because of the economic situation that the the cuts had left.