Do public servants need a pay rise? Yes. Do they trust Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats to deliver it? Absolutely not. Instead of pledging to increase public sector pay in the next parliament, Clegg might as well have offered us the moon on a stick.

The Lib Dem leader, facing electoral humiliation for his party and possibly even the loss of his own seat, is indulging in wild-eyed fantasies, laying into the “ideological” Tories whom he has spent the last five years propping up. It is as transparent as it is pathetic.

Clegg did exactly the same before the 2010 election, of course (not to mention the famous tuition fee pledge). Two months before the election he raised the spectre of a Tory government announcing “in that sort of macho way” that it would have to slash public spending because of the need to take “early, tough action”.

Weeks later, in government, the Lib Dems voted for an emergency budget that did just that. The austerity measures set in train immediately after the election meant living standards for many civil servants have slumped, while 90,000 of their colleagues have lost their jobs.

If average civil service pay had kept pace with inflation during this parliament, it would be £1,800 higher than it is now. But this average masks the true extent of Clegg’s government’s cuts. The latest civil service statistics show most of the change in median earnings is attributable not to pay rises, but grade drift – a decline in the proportion of lower-paid grades as they have borne the brunt of staff cuts.

Take our current dispute among the wardens at Windsor Castle, which follows five years of pay restraint imposed by a Treasury that included a senior Lib Dem minister. These loyal workers now barely earn the living wage and are being forced, against their instincts and inclinations, to consider industrial action for the first time.

These policies do not only affect the public sector, they knock on to private companies. This week, 200 of our members employed by the US company Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) to administer the pensions of our armed forces, are on strike after being offered a pay rise of less than 0.5% for 2014.

Since CSC took over this Ministry of Defence contract in 2012, it has awarded just one pay increase of 1.5% – and that was only in the face of industrial action after talks at Acas. Last year CSC posted pre-tax profits of $1bn.

This should all be natural territory for Labour but, in a move that outraged unions, it backed the government’s pay freeze, and now must do much more than its manifesto commitment to prioritise “those on lower incomes”.



Meanwhile Clegg, whose government has cut taxes for the wealthiest and slashed corporation tax, has thanked public servants for “doing their bit”. But they should never have been made to suffer such massive cuts to their living standards at all.

It is not thanks they want, but proper pay rises that make up for five years of Tory and Lib Dem austerity. With Clegg in any position of power, no one would be holding their breath.

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