The need to address National Pay Bargaining

National Pay Bargaining is one of the major impediments to rebalancing the national economy and improving the quality of public services. But as Julian Astle, the head of the Liberal think tank Centre Forum, notes the coalition is doing little about it. It knows that the public sector unions will go to the wall for national pay bargaining and so are holding off.

Gordon Brown flirted with doing something about national pay bargaining, announcing a review of it in the 2003 Budget. But he then backed away from the issue.

One area where the coalition is chipping away at national pay bargaining is schools. Academies and free schools have the right to set their own pay and conditions. But, interestingly, academies tend not to use these freedoms.