Brown freezes state pay
October 7, 2009
By Bloomberg London
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced a freeze in government pay yesterday, while the opposition said it wanted people to retire later as UK politicians vied to show determination to cut a record budget deficit.
The government said wages should remain unchanged next year for judges, family doctors and senior health service administrators. Other civil servants should get raises of less than 1 percent. About 750 000 people would be affected.
Meanwhile George Osborne, the Conservative Party's shadow finance minister, said yesterday that he wanted to bring forward an increase in the national retirement age to 2016, a decade earlier than planned, to cut £13 billion (R158bn) a year off the deficit.
Andrew Cooper, a pollster at Populus, said: "Voters think it's inevitable there will be spending cuts whoever wins the election. They say they'd rather politicians tell them the truth."
The announcements mark the start of a period of austerity after almost two decades of uninterrupted growth.
Even during the depths of the recession, Britons were cushioned from the crisis by spending on government programmes and tax cuts.
Now, both Brown's Labour Party and David Cameron's Conservatives say the government must cut spending to curtail a deficit, which at 12 percent of national income next year will be the biggest in the Group of 20 nations.
With an election due no later than June, both parties are aiming to build their credibility on economic issues.
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