STRIKE fears grew last night after Downing Street ruled out extra funding for teachers’ and NHS staff pay increases.
Unions reacted with fury as ministers said rises would have to come from already squeezed Whitehall budgets.
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Pay review bodies are understood to be recommending a four per cent hike for teachers and three per cent for NHS staff – more than the budgeted 2.8.
The prospect of a lower award than last year raised concerns about industrial action.
National Education Union boss Daniel Kebede said: “It’s really important that we do have a pay award that takes steps to address that crisis in recruitment and retention but equally, we need to see the pay award funded.”
He said of the Government: “They were elected on the promise of change, of recruiting six and a half thousand new teachers.
“We hope they stick to those promises.”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves faces huge pressure to hike taxes or cut spending in the Budget amid Donald Trump’s trade war.
Jo Galbraith-Marten, of the Royal College of Nursing, also said any rise must be fully funded, adding “taking resources away from front-line services is unfair on staff and bad for patients”.
Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith MP commented: “People forgot what the 1970s were like, but Labour is giving us all a refresher course – bins rotting in the streets, waves of strikes and unions holding the country to ransom.”
Ministers last year accepted pay review bodies’ recommendations of between 4.75 per cent and six per cent to end disputes.
Sir Keir Starmer yesterday said that the “last thing” NHS staff wanted was to get into further disputes.
He said: “If you work with the NHS staff, you get better results than the last government, which just went into battle with them.
“So we have got our doctors and nurses on the front line, not the picket line, and I think everybody appreciates that’s a much better way of doing business.”
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