Tory Leadership front-runner Liz Truss has ditched a pledge to cut public payroll spending after her rival claimed it would mean large pay cuts for nurses, police and soldiers.
A source in the Truss campaign said "there will be no proposal taken forward" after fellow Tories said her plan unveiled on Monday evening to replace national pay boards with regional equivalents was a gift to the opposition Labour Party.
Truss, the foreign secretary, claimed the scheme would save £8.8 billion — but former chancellor Rishi Sunak's campaign stressed that would mean key public-sector workers taking a £1,500 pay cut after stepping up to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
A source in Sunak's team said his rival's figures did not add up — unless she is planning "salary carnage".
"In total more than 5.7 million public sector workers would see their pay being cut by an average of £1,500 a year under these plans (Dividing Liz’s £8.8 billion savings by the number of public sector workers having their pay cut – 5.7 million)," the source said.
Team Truss hurriedly walked back the pledge on Tuesday.
"Over the last few hours there has been a willful misrepresentation of our campaign," a spokesperson said, insisting that "Current levels of public sector pay will absolutely be maintained."
"Anything to suggest otherwise is simply wrong," the Truss team added. "Our hard-working frontline staff are the bed rock of society and there will be no proposal taken forward on regional pay boards for civil servants or public sector workers."
In Monday night's debate on Sky News — in fact a pair of separate interviews with the two candidates to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister — Truss said she would "run a leaner, more efficient, more focused Whitehall that prioritizes the things that really matter to people and is laser-focused on frontline services."
"There is too much bureaucracy and stale groupthink in Whitehall," Truss said. "If I make it into Downing Street, I will put an end to that and run a government that focuses relentlessly on delivering for the British public, and offer value to hard-working taxpayers."
Conservative Mayor of the Tees Valley metro area Ben Houchen called the Truss pay plan a "ticking time-bomb" that would blow up in the Tories' face when they next go to the polls.
"There is simply no way you can do this without a massive pay cut for 5.5 mln people including nurses, police officers and our armed forces outside London," Houchen said.
He pointed out that the Truss campaign itself had admitted the savings were only possible if the scheme was applied to all public-sector workers, adding: "This is a ticking time bomb set by team Truss that will explode ahead of the next general election."