The Trades Union Congress said next week’s autumn statement was necessary to protect both public services and workers’ wages from the highest rates of inflation since the early 1980s to prevent the quality of support collapsing further. for health, social care, education, justice and the environment. Drawing on research from the New Economics Foundation thinktank, she said the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, would need to provide £43 billion a year in today’s prices until 2024-25 to ensure adequate protection for public services after years of cuts. With inflation at 10.1%, the highest level since 1982, he warned there was now a significant shortfall in the spending firepower of every government department compared to the funding arrangements they were given in 2021 when Sunak was chancellor. “The financial crisis of 2022 means public service budgets are now worth much less because of higher prices,” the TUC and NEF said in a report, while warning Sunak that he had told parliament that world-class public services were “the priority of the people”. . According to the report, health and social care are facing the biggest funding shortfall since the inflationary boom, with health services facing a gap of £15.7bn a year by 2024-25 against the spending review pledge of 2021. Education will face a £7.1bn shortfall compared to its spending review settlement, while there are also shortfalls for the justice department, as well as environment, food and rural affairs. Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, said public services were left understaffed and overwhelmed after more than a decade of austerity. “Now the twin collision of rising inflation and the Tories’ disastrous mini-budget has pushed them to the brink,” he said. “As chancellor, the new prime minister must keep his promise to fund ‘world-class public services’. Our NHS, schools and public services must not be collateral damage to the Tories crashing the economy in 2022.” A Treasury spokesman said restoring economic stability and confidence that the UK is a country that pays its own way is the government’s “number one priority”. “The Prime Minister and Chancellor have been clear that this will require some difficult decisions, but protecting public services and the most vulnerable will be a priority.”
