Union Demands Will Destroy Our Economic Recovery

‘Medics are right to be angry when contractors are paid £7,000 a day’

- Ross Clark

How much we all wish that the doctors, nurses, and paramedics who bore the brunt of the pandemic could be given a pay rise greater than the three per cent they have been offered.

It would be wonderful to be able to say to them: go on, have a holiday with us – you deserve it.

But sadly, the public finances are in no fit state for generous pay awards.

Unions, demanding hikes of between 12 and 15 per cent for health workers – and threatening to strike if they don’t get it – are being deeply irresponsible.

Where do they think all the extra-national wealth needed for such awards would come from? The economy shrank by nearly 10 percent last year.

While tax revenues plummeted, fighting Covid imposed huge extra costs on the taxpayer. The result was a public deficit of nearly £300billion in the last financial year.

We are still a long, long way from closing the gap between revenue and expenditure. In June alone, the Government spent £22.8billion more than it received in revenue.

As a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, the Government is borrowing as much as it was in 1946 when we had just finished six years fighting a world war.