Member

On pay, I have today set out our decision to meet the recommendations of the pay review bodies. Because the previous Government failed to prepare for these recommendations in the departmental budgets, they come at an additional cost of £9 billion this year. The first difficult choice I am making is to ask all departments to find savings to absorb as much of this as possible, totalling at least £3 billion. To support departments as they do this, I will work with them to find savings ahead of the Autumn Budget, including through measures to stop all non-essential spending on consultancy and Government communications. I am also taking action to ask departments to find 2% savings in their back-office costs.