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LONDON (AP) — U.K. Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt will stage a moment of high political theater Wednesday, unveiling his budget to a crowd of baying lawmakers as consumers demand more help with the high cost of living and workers press for higher wages with strikes at schools, hospitals and the offices of civil servants.
Even as Hunt plays his historically scripted role — emerging from his official residence with the spending plan in a battered red dispatch box, then carrying it to the House of Commons where he will be greeted by jeers and cheers — the truth is he will try to be as boring as possible.
“We shouldn’t expect much in the way of rabbits or hats in this budget,” said Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at the investment adviser Hargreaves Lansdown. “Jeremy Hunt needs to remain boring and predictable to avoid unsettling the markets.”
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Government workers, teachers and the young doctors who staff the nation’s hospitals will be walking the picket line Wednesday, furious that public-sector workers have borne the brunt of the budget austerity implemented by Hunt’s Conservative Party after it took power following the global financial crisis.
The British Medical Association, which represents the fully qualified physicians known in the U.K. as “junior doctors,” says first-year doctors have seen their pay fall by 26% over the past 15 years after accounting for inflation.
That means first-year doctors now earn as little as 14.09 pounds an hour, compared with up to 14.10 pounds an hour for baristas at Pret a Manger, a sandwich and coffee shop chain that just gave workers a third raise in less than 12 months, the group said.
Rebecca Lissman, 29, a trainee in obstetrics and gynecology, said junior doctors are just asking is to be “paid a wage that matches our skill set.”
“I want to be in work, looking after people, getting trained,” she said. “I don’t want to be out here striking, but I feel that I have to.”
The government says the medical association’s comparison to baristas is misleading because most doctors actually make more than the basic minimum salary and have much higher lifetime earning potential than shop workers.
Hunt’s other major goal is rebuilding Britain’s reputation for fiscal responsibility by reducing the public debt built up during the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The government wants to cut borrowing to less than 3% of economic output and begin reducing debt as a percentage of output within five years.
But higher-than-expected revenue and lower spending, combined with more optimistic forecasts for economic growth and interest rates, may mean the government has room to spend an additional 166 billion pounds without endangering its targets, according to estimates from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, an independent think tank.
And several spending initiatives have been leaked ahead of the release of what is being called a “back-to-work budget.”
Those include increased child care payments to help young mothers return to work and more generous allowances for tax-free pension saving to entice early retirees back into the workforce.
During a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last weekend in San Diego, Sunak announced plans to boost defense spending to 2.5% of economic output amid increasing threats from Russia and China.
But back home, thousands of doctors, nurses and other workers are picketing in front of hospitals and other government buildings.
Outside St. Thomas’ Hospital in central London, Leah Sugarman, 33, joined other strikers as they chanted, ‘’What do we want? Fair pay! When do we want it? Now!”
“We’ve all lived through COVID, that was horrendous. Most of us have come out mentally scarred from that,” she said. “And every day that I leave work, I pretty much want to cry because I haven’t been able to do the job that I chose to go into this profession for.”
She added that she has been forced to drop her hours to less than 40 hours a week, “because I can’t mentally go to work full time anymore.”
“It is just a car crash,” she said. “So that’s why I’m here.”
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