UK

Which side are they on?

HubMP2012

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

It’s time for Labour to get off the sidelines and tackle inflation, argues Fran Heathcote.

Fran Heathcote is General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union.

In December the Prime Minister said the test of his Government would be whether it boosted living standards.

Today, Ofgem has announced energy bills would rise by another 6.4% in April – which follows a 10% hike in October and a 1.2% rise in January, meaning that energy bill have risen by over 18% since Labour was elected.

And it’s not just energy bills either, water companies have been allowed to hike annual water bills by as much as 47% from April. Imagine the outrage in the press if hard-pressed public sector workers demanded an increase of that magnitude – and our members aren’t dumping raw sewage in rivers and seas!

If Keir Starmer wants to understand why his poll ratings are tanking, he needs to look no further than the household finances of millions of people struggling to make ends meet.

He could simply walk along Whitehall and speak to some of the security guards and cleaners working for his ministers who are paid the minimum wage with no access to company sick pay. They have been taking strike action to demand better.

Overall inflation is now rising by 3%, but private rents are up by 8.7% on average across the UK (and more in many cities: for example, 11% in London), while food price inflation is 3.3%. Many workers who have just cobbled together enough to get a mortgage are facing huge hikes in their costs as interest rates have remained high since the disastrous mini-Budget of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng.

In December, the Government recommended a pay rise of 2.8% for millions of public sector workers for 2025/26, but since then inflation has risen to 3% and the Bank of England forecasts it will rise further to 3.7% later this year.

So far, Government ministers have twiddled their thumbs while energy corporations, water companies, landlords and banks have profiteered at the expense of working class people. People are fed up with being ripped off.

The Government can no longer sit back. It needs to tackle an active, interventionist approach on the side of working class people.

In February, IPSA proposed that MPs’ pay would rise by 2.8% in April. That’s below inflation, but a lot more than the 1.7% increase the very poorest people in our society will be getting in benefits increase.

That’s because annual benefit increases are set by the inflation rate in September, even though the uprating doesn’t take effect until the following April. So the very poorest people in our society – many living in poverty, some in destitution – get a 1.7% increase even though their living costs are rising by 3% or more.

In cash terms, the figures are even more stark: an MP currently receiving £91,346 would see their annual pay rise by over £210 per month more; a 1.7% increase in the basic allowance of Universal Credit equates to just an extra £7 per month.

It is PCS members, working in jobcentres, who work with Universal Credit claimants and know just how desperate life is for people struggling on our paltry and unnecessarily punitive benefits system.

It is ridiculous to suggest that the richest in our society and the profiteering corporations cannot afford to pay a bit more tax to fund better social security and a decent pay rise for the lowest earners.

This Labour government will no doubt get unfair criticism from the right wing press, but it needs to listen to its core working class voter base.

Stop mugging pensioners and letting energy companies hike bills every three months; stop imposing real terms cuts on public sector workers while refusing to hike taxes on the richest; and don’t condemn people into deeper poverty and cut local housing allowance while landlords profiteer.

You can’t get economic growth without boosting the incomes of working class people. If the Government fails to cap prices, people will rightly demand higher wage and benefit settlements.

Image: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fran_Heathcote_%28PCS%29,_Tolpuddle_Martyrs%27_Festival_2024.jpg Author: DimiTalen, licensed  under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.