Labour promised ‘growth, growth, growth’… if they mean it, cut public sector and boost private sector
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MAKING predictions for the coming year is a mug’s game. But there is one forecast I feel confident in making: That the people who are contributing least to economic growth will be the ones reaping the rewards. Figures from the Resolution Foundation confirm what has been obvious for months: That public sector workers have been the big winners from Labour’s general election victory.
![[The Government need to be shrinking the unproductive public sector and boosting the private sector]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/newspress-collage-h7f77w6cs-1735336887566.jpg?1735336915&strip=all&w=960)
At the beginning of 2024 the average public sector worker was earning two per cent more than an equivalent worker in the private sector. Since then the gap has trebled to six per cent. The differential in salaries, though, is only half the story. Many public sector workers continue to enjoy salary-linked pensions.
![[In the first three months of the Labour government the economy failed to grow at all]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-prime-minister-keir-starmer-958342178.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Private sector employers realised long ago that increasing longevity was making it unaffordable to offer workers guaranteed, index-linked pensions for life based on what they were earning while in work. Yet public sector employers have carried on getting these generous pensions regardless, relying on taxpayers to pick up the burden.
Another shocking set of figures released yesterday shows that across Britain a quarter of council tax receipts are now swallowed up by pension contributions for council staff. In some areas it is much more. Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council managed to spend more on pension contributions last year (£10.1million) than it raised in council tax (£9.5million).
