British government ministers will have their pay frozen for another five years as the government tries to reduce the budget deficit, Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday.
Cabinet ministers’ pay has been frozen since 2010, when it was cut by five per cent as part of the then-coalition government’s austerity efforts.
Cameron’s Conservatives, who won a surprise majority in this month’s election, have pledged to find £25 billion of spending cuts over the next two years as they seek to turn a five per cent budget deficit into a surplus by 2018/19.
“We will continue to take the difficult decisions necessary to bring spending down and secure our economy,” Cameron wrote in the Sunday Times newspaper.
“I’ve decided to freeze the pay of the ministers in the government ... as we continue knuckling down as country, we will all play our part.”
An independent body which oversees lawmakers’ pay and expenses has recommended all 650 members of Parliament, including ministers, receive a 10 per cent pay rise this year which would take their parliamentary salary to £74,000. Cameron has called on it to reconsider this proposal.
In the past when the independent body has raised lawmakers’ pay, the government has decreased what ministers earn on top of their MP salary so that their overall package remains unchanged.
As we continue knuckling down as a country, we will all play our part
Meanwhile in another political development which was revealed yesterday the active leader of Britain’s Opposition Labour Party said the party will back Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to hold a referendum on the country’s European Union membership by the end of 2017. Labour had fought this month’s national election, in which it suffered a crushing defeat to Cameron’s Conservatives, on the policy that it would offer Britons an EU referendum only if there were a further transfer of powers to Brussels from London.
Cameron, who has promised to renegotiate Britain’s ties with the EU ahead of the referendum, will on Wednesday set out plans to enshrine the vote in law when his government’s legislative agenda is published.
“The British people want to have a say on the UK’s membership of the EU. Labour will therefore now support the EU referendum Bill,” acting Labour leader Harriet Harman and foreign affairs spokesman Hilary Benn wrote in an article in the Sunday Times newspaper. Harman and Benn said that while Labour wanted to see reforms to the EU, it would make the case for continued membership.
“The Labour Party does not want to see the UK stumble inadvertently towards EU exit,” Harman and Benn said. “We have more power by being in the EU than we could ever hope to have by acting alone.”
Cameron, who is hosting European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for talks at his official country residence today, has said he favours staying in a reformed EU but will rule nothing out if he fails to get the change he is seeking. Among planned reforms he has outlined are restrictions to EU migrants’ access to Britain’s welfare system, an opt-out of “ever closer” union inside the bloc and to cut EU “red tape”. Business Secretary Sajid Javid said changes to tax credits, which top up the incomes of some working people, were central as EU citizens coming to Britain can receive twice as much as they would in Germany and three times as much as in France.
“That’s the kind of thing we need to change ... It’s a very key part of our negotiation,” he told the BBC. A YouGov poll for the Sunday Times, carried out May 21-22, found 44 percent of the 1,532 people surveyed favoured staying in the EU, while 36 per cent would vote to leave.