The British prime minister has told healthcare workers that the government cannot raise taxes further to settle pay disputes that have erupted into strikes.
"Where we are with taxes at the moment, we can’t put them up, that’s what constrains me," Rishi Sunak told staff on a visit to a hospital County Durham in the north-east of England. "Nothing would give me more pleasure than to wave a magic wand and have you paid lots more."
Nurses, along with ambulance paramedics and their support staff, have held a series of strikes over the past two months in demand of pay rises that match or exceed double-digit increases in the cost of living.
The Royal College of Nursing wants a settlement of five per cent above the rate of inflation — which was running at 10.5 per cent for the consumer price index (CPI) in December, and 15.2 per cent for the retail price index (RPI).
As chancellor of the exchequer under his predecessor Boris Johnson, Sunak raised corporation tax and National Insurance, the UK's social security tax, to fund COVID-19 lockdown furlough payments, nursing care for the elderly and to clear the backlog of National Health Service cases left by the pandemic.
But current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, whose appointment was forced on the government by the City of London after short-lived PM Liz Truss tried to reverse Sunak's tax hikes, has warned of a return to austerity amid the financial crisis caused by sanctions on Russia.