Northern Tories savage Truss’s ‘war on waste’

Oh dear. It seems that Liz Truss’s winning run has come to an end. After a week of riding high, the Foreign Secretary’s campaign for leader has hit a bit of a bump in the road. Her campaign last night sent out a press release declaring: ‘Truss: I’ll wage a war on Whitehall waste to save taxpayers £11 billion.’ It promised that diversity and inclusion posts in the civil service will be scrapped and that taxpayer-funded trade union facility time will be curbed too. So far, so good.

But it was the pledge that ‘a Truss government will introduce Regional Pay Boards so pay accurately reflects where civil servants work’ that has got alarm bells ringing across the country. Her campaign claimed that the government ‘could save billions a year’ by doing this to ‘make it easier to adjust officials’ pay’ and ‘stop the crowding out of local businesses that can not compete with public sector pay.’