Rachel Reeves is set to put a major squeeze on British taxpayers as the true cost of union payouts has been revealed.
Britons are expected to pay out £14billion to unions according to new calculations by the Tory Party.
Keir Starmer’s party has said the payouts are necessary as they argue they need to stop the strikes at all costs.
Reeves has already paid out to junior doctors, train drivers and teachers in a bid to end strike action across the public sector.
To date, Reeves has already spent an estimated £9.4billion after offering Aslef train drivers a 14 per cent pay rise over three years.
Yet despite the increase, train drivers are still set to strike every weekend for the next three months.
After gaining access to the country’s ledgers following the Labour landslide in the General Election, Reeves claimed there was a “£22billion black hole” left by the Conservative Party.
However, the Tory analysis of union payouts suggested that hardworking Britons could be hundreds of pounds worse off.
If Reeves raises income tax, 2.24 per cent would be added to the basic rate and would mean workers would pay £878 more per year whereas a National Insurance rise would cost Class 1 employees £675 a year.
Train drivers were offered a 14 per cent pay rise over three years in an attempt to bring strikes which have been rocking the country for over two years to an end
PA
Conservative Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Laura Trott, said of the findings: “This Labour Government has taken a political choice to prioritise their union paymasters over the taxpayer.
“These inflation-busting union pay deals being handed out by the new government show loud and clear that all of Rachel Reeves’ claims about their inheritance are a total fabrication, and nothing but a poor attempt at an excuse for the tax rises she planned all along.
“The British public will not forgive Labour for breaking their promises not to raise any taxes on working people.”
Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec previously told the Telegraph: “The Government has chosen to increase public sector pay in certain areas, which is also adding to public finance pressures.
“There was always going to be a conflict between the need to restrain public sector pay from the perspective of the public finances and of course Labour’s ties with the trade union.”
Conservative Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Laura Trott, said: ‘This Labour Government has taken a political choice to prioritise their union paymasters over the taxpayer’
PA
Isabel Stockton from the IFS warned spending so far looks unsustainable, adding that it was at the “higher end of what one might have expected”.
She said: “In just one-third of this financial year the Government appears to have spent 34.1 per cent of what was budgeted for the whole year, whereas since comparable data began in 1997 it has never spent more than 32.9 per cent of the eventual total in the first third of the financial year.
“This is indicative of the scale of the pressures on departmental budgets – in some cases well and above what was budgeted for.”
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Source Agencies
