Angela Rayner’s social care plan that may lump tax payers with enormous invoice | Politics | News | EUROtoday

Angela Rayner’s plan to introduce “fair pay agreements” within the social care sector would value taxpayers £21billion over a parliament, a number one think-tank has warned.

Policy Exchange’s new report claims the introduction of legally binding pay ranges and dealing situations might end in folks having to fork out an additional £225 a yr in council tax.

The proposals – which have been known as an act of “economic self-harm” – would gasoline inflation and will depart staff worse off, it additionally cautions.

Labour has been urged to state whether or not it might pay for elevated workers prices by borrowing or taxes.

Last yr, deputy chief Ms Rayner promised {that a} Labour Government would “boost collective bargaining”, beginning with “fair pay agreements in adult social care”.

Representatives of staff and employers would negotiate agreements which might be “binding on all employers and workers in the sector”.

Policy Exchange has calculated that if unions secured the TUC’s demand final yr for a minimal wage in social care of £15 per hour, this might end in a £9.9billion pay hike.

A pay settlement within the care sector could also be only the start, as Labour’s inexperienced paper, A New Deal for Working People, states it might set up them “across the economy”. Laura Trott, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, mentioned: “This independent report shows Angela Rayner’s new French-style unions laws will lead to yet another Labour raid on pensioners’ pockets.

“Whilst we are protecting the triple lock, and raising the state pension by £900 a year, Labour are once again willing to take pensioners right back to square one, with higher taxes to pay for unfunded promises.”

Labour has argued that the coverage would assist deal with the recruitment and retention disaster within the care sector.

The grownup social care sector had 152,000 vacant posts in 2022-23, with a workers turnover price of 28.3 per cent, based on workforce planning physique Skills for Care. It claimed the real-terms common hourly pay for a carer within the impartial sector was simply £10.11 in March final yr.

Last yr Ms Rayner mentioned: “As a former social care worker, I cannot overstate the difference this will make, not only for low-paid and far too often overlooked workers but also to our entire healthcare system weighted down by years of Tory neglect.”

However, Iain Mansfield, the creator of the report, mentioned: “If growing the economy is genuinely their number one priority they cannot afford to introduce such inflationary and ­economically destructive policies.”

Roger Bootle, a high-profile economist who works with the think-tank, mentioned: “This is an especially harmful form of collective bargaining when it comes to labour market flexibility and productivity growth, and it is largely ineffectual at increasing real wages.

“No government genuinely committed to increasing the prosperity of the UK could contemplate such an act of economic self-harm.”

Christina McAnea, of the Unison commerce union, mentioned: “Only when care workers get decent pay will more people want to work in the sector.

“A fair pay agreement negotiated by government, unions and employers is the most sensible way of doing this.”

Labour mentioned: “These claims are based on fiction and don’t reflect Labour policy. The real risk to people’s pockets is a £46billion unfunded Tory pledge to abolish National Insurance.”