(Reuters) – Britain’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke on Wednesday backed the Bank of England governor’s call for pay rise restraint to head off high inflation.
Clarke said on the “Peston” programme on ITV that a general restraint, both at the top and bottom of the income scale, was important.
“I do think a wider message of general restraint is a very important one. It’s one we will apply in the public sector. We have to be conscious of inflation as a risk,” Clarke said.
Last week, BoE Governor Andrew Bailey said inflation – already running at a 30-year high in Britain – risked getting out of control without restraint on pay rises.
Bailey’s remarks drew a sharp response from unions. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said the government would not echo the BoE governor’s call as it was not their responsibility to tell companies how to pay their employees.
John Allan, the chairman of Tesco, Britain’s biggest supermarket, said earlier this week that his staff deserve to be protected from inflation and it was wrong for the BoE governor to tell workers to restrain their demands for wage rises.
(Reporting by Shivam Patel in Bengaluru, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
