ALL public sector workers on salaries of more than £18,000 would see their pay frozen under Conservative plans to slash £7bn of government spending every year, while ministers' pay would be cut by five per cent.
The moves were announced by shadow chancellor George Osborne at the Conservative conference in Manchester today.
He also said he would impose a £50,000 cap on public sector pensions and start means-testing so-called 'baby bonds'.
A Conservative government would also stop paying tax credits to households with incomes of more than £50,000, by means-testing the family element of child tax credit.
Mr Osborne pledged to draw up detailed plans take an axe to quangos and Whitehall red-tape - slashing spending by £3bn a year.
And he confirmed plans to bring forward a review of the state-pension age - opening the way for it to be increased to 66 for men by 2016, and for women by 2020. That would be combined with a renewed commitment to link the level of state pension with average earnings.
Mr Osborne said he would keep the government's new 50p tax rate for high earners 'for at least as long as the public-sector pay freeze', due to start in 2011.
Military personnel on active service would be 'more than compensated' by doubling their operational allowance to an average of £4,800 for a six-month tour of duty, the shadow chancellor added.
Mr Osborne said a Conservative government would 'offer a complete change from the double-counting, the fiddled figures, the off-balance-sheet trickery, the stealth taxes and the feckless irresponsibility of the last 12 years'. He said Britain was now borrowing £17m a year and spending one pound in every four on servicing the national debt.
Mr Osborne, the MP for Tatton, said it was a 'disgrace' that Gordon Brown had used his own conference speech in Brighton to 'unveil a list of new unfunded spending commitments'.
"When he should have been giving this country a lead, he went shopping on Brighton Pier with the nation's credit card," said Mr Osborne.
"The iron chancellor has turned into the plastic prime minister. He is treating the British people like fools."
The shadow chancellor said he expected all parts of the country to share the burden of 'rebuilding' the economy. He repeated the mantra 'we are all in this together' several times during his half-hour address.
"This is about character as well as policy," he said. "Now we face the biggest challenge - how to build the sort of Britain we want in the face of the largest deficit in the developed world."
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What does he mean he will freeze public sector pay. Why wasn't it frozen as soon as the recession started? Virtually everybody else has had at least frozen pay, sometime a reduction and we in the real world pay the public sectors wages. We can't afford it.
I have a friend in the NHS and her pension (only 42 years old now) will be astronomical when she retires.
There is so much waste. Even Brown said that he would slash £2bn off the Education Service with 'little effect on quality' so why on earth were we paying that £2bn anyway.
This is what Labour have done since being in power:
£22,500 of debt for every child born in Britain
- 111 tax rises from a government that promised no tax rises at all
- 100,000 million pounds drained from British pension funds
- Gun crime up by 57%
- Violent crime up 70%
- The highest proportion of children living in workless households anywhere in Europe
- The number of pensioners living in poverty up by 100,000
- The lowest level of social mobility in the developed world
- The only G7 country with no growth this year
- One in six young people neither earning nor learning
- 5 million people on out-of –work benefits
- Missing the target of halving child poverty
- Ending up with child poverty rising in each of the last three years instead
- Cancer survival rates among the worst in Europe
- Hospital-acquired infections killing nearly three times as many people as are killed on the roads
- Falling from 4th to 13th in the world competitiveness league
- Falling from 8th to 24th in the world education rankings in maths
- Falling from 7th to 17th in the rankings in literacy
- The police spending more time on paperwork than on the beat
- Fatal stabbings at an all-time high
- Prisoners released without serving their sentences
- Foreign prisoners released and never deported
- 7 million people without an NHS dentist
- Small business taxes going up
- Business taxes raised from among the lowest to among the highest in Europe
- Tax rises for working people set for after the election
- The 10p tax rate abolished
- And the ludicrous promise to have ended boom and bust
- Our gold reserves sold for a quarter of their worth
- Our armed forces overstretched and under-supplied
- Profitable post offices closed against their will
- One of the highest rates of family breakdown in Europe
- The ‘Golden Rule’ on borrowing abandoned when it didn’t fit
- Police inspectors in 10,Downing Street
- Dossiers that were dodgy
- Mandelson resigning the first time
- Mandelson resigning the second time
- Mandelson coming back for a third time
- Bad news buried
- Personal details lost
- An election bottled
- A referendum denied
Apart from that they lived up to all their promises.
Why is the pension age not 75? How much would that save the country? Why retire if you are fit, well and able bodied?
"Ron, Gorton, ." - The cut and paste king!
The Tories - should the nation be daft enough to vote them into office - would make Labour's mistakes look like schoolboy errors...
It's been said before: God (no one else will) help you if you are old, sick or unemployed, should Cameron and his cronies get elected. The workhouse beckons for those not able to fit into the Tory mould.
FTR: Fluffy, the sofa man... looks like your wife would have to work even longer under a Conservative government. Excellent timing, George Osborne.
Be careful what you (claim to) wish for, you may just get it!
hey "Ron"
I'd be splitting my sides laughing if it was'nt all true!
As MPs work in the public sector,is it too much to presume that they are having their pay frozen and their fiddles eliminated and their holidays reduced and their jaunts(fact findings) eliminated?
Ron,Gorton.A great list but no mention of the Criminal Rights Act.
David Kelly
Cash for Peerages
MPs expenses.
Stupid and illegal waste of time and lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Uncontrolled immigration
An emasculated police force.
Rampant political correctness.
Someone elses turn now!
There were going to be a lot out there that were ready to jump ship and vote Tories. After the announcements made yesterday by Cameron and his side kick today I bet a lot are now thinking sod that I'll stick with the devil I know.
Laura Norder, Didsbury : "The workhouse beckons for those not able to fit into the Tory mould".
Laura, never a truer word said! And the workhouse is a great idea, get the lazy 'proles' doing some work, fill them full a chavs and the uneducated. Best place for them and gets them doing something productive. We can redploy some of the useless public sector wasters in there as well! Result all round!
Laura. You've clearly run out or arguments, so just have to resort to the old leftie stereotype. How fittingly NuLabour. All they can seem to say now in response to any real policy initiative is "It's a con". Labour have lost the debate, lost public confidence and lost all respect. Time they lost an election.
Yes Laura n Order (more like Laurel n'..) I cut and paste - so what?
You say GTod help you if you are old, sick or unemployed. Why? My Grandma is 89, my Grandad died twenty years ago and she is in a home now as she can't look after herslef. All her life savings and her house have been taken to pay for her council care. She and my Grandad worked hard all their lives, saved up, bought their own house and all that went. Under Tories you pay £8,000 before 65 and you will be taken care of, not having to hand everything that you worked for over.
As for the unemployed well you will be OK if you are genuinley unemployed and unable to work. Not like now where 5m live off the social whilst 4m Poles found work. The social is a safety net, not a way to sponge of others. Are you happy that people are living off you but have never done a days work? One in seven adults in Manchester are on incapacity benefit. What does that say about Manchester? Bad diet, accidents at work 50% higher than national average. One in seven. Only a fool would believe that tehy were all genuine. If they are then I wouldn't employ anyone here as they aresick or accident prone.
As for God help us if you are sick well why? The Tories will just remove the layers upon layers of pointless target chasing management. Bureacracy is preventing people doing their jobs. Same with the police. If you arrest a shoplifter it takes SIX hours to fill out the paperwork.
Savings can be made as this inept government threw money away.
Take the selling of gold. Brown announced 'In two months time I will sell the UK's gold reserves'. Knowing that they market was about to be flooded what happened? The price went to an all time low and it was sold at that price. Basic stuff. If he couldn't get that right what chance the whole economy.
'My light regulation has helped teh City achieve it's outstanding success' said Brown. Tow months before the first run on a UK bnak in three hundred years.
Still, Manchester will always vote Labour because 'my Dad did'. Why can't peopel do what I do, make an informed opnion. I have voted for all three main parties based on my judgement. If you read teh Guardian then make sure you read teh Telegraph too.
Never ever vote based on 'it's what me Dad did' like that 76 year old whose father died twenty years back.
This country is in serious trouble but all peopel harp on about is 'rich Tories'. Blair is worth £16m and Madleson has a £21k watch but people still say that are the people of the working class! Ha. In Gorton I can't find anybody worth £16m or that has a £21k watch.
I have had enough of Labour so will vote Tory now.
No mention about Bandwagon Cameron, has a massive mortgage on his constituency house paid for by us ans he is sitting on £30m personal fortune, why the mortgage?
A quick easy way to save a massive amount of money, make civil servants contribute to their pensions instead of the Government paying 15% of their pay into a pension they could say go 50/50 thus cutting the bill in half overnight. I know I will get a lot of these people on here moaning about low pay, but look at the banks and insurance companies what they pay their clerical and junior management staff (this was the original basis for civil service pay) it is now upto a third less than their civil service counterparts.
Laura Norder, do you not get it?
Labour have failed. Badly. Every time they get into power they screw up the country.
I may not like the Tories, but they at least fix things. They're out. Labour are going to lose badly, and hopefully never get elected again.
If your foolish enough to think of them as supporting the working class, then you really need your eyes opening - they pander to the unions and special interest groups. It's why inequality has increased in the UK, it's why we have barely educated kids running wild, whereas champagne socialist union leaders can swan about in Rolls Royces.
You can keep trotting out lies, spin and recycled tractor stats, but next General Election it's good bye Labour, and their nasty little authoritarian ways. Good riddance.
mp's are on far too much money anyways along with the PERKS of the job!! get rid of most mp's and we'll save millions!!!!
Good man, let's have more pay freezes for the bloated public sector - all 6,000,000 of them!
Conservatives said they know they have a mountain to climb. A little one or a big one?.
Labour 2 Conservatives 0.
"ALL public sector workers on salaries of more than £18,000 would see their pay frozen under Conservative plans"
So everyone other than maybe cleaners get a pay cut in real terms. Millions of votes lost there then!
Come on, give the Labour Party some credit. Those are quite some achievements in the small space of 12 years, quantitively speaking.
Well the tories have probably just lost one hell of a lot of votes.
A minister who shall we say earns 100k per year.....5% of that is no major loss-They still earn big bucks 95k so this does not hurt them one iota (not forgetting all there allowances).
A public sector worker who earns 18k per year...no pay rise for a year. Yes it is only one year but they are missing the point.They are penalising middle Britain once more and public sector workers with families who are struggling to make ends meet..
Unreal...Yes I work for the public sector but this wont hurt me as luckily I am in a higher bracket so to lose a pay rise for one year doesn't really bother me.Its my colleagues and lower earners who this hurts.Genuine people who work there butts off for what??? To pay for all the liggers/spongers and scummy sods who breed kids to create income etc etc...Doesnt it make you sick!!
Can you please continue to rise to the childlike insults from Laura Norder.
It's obviously an attention issue and quite deep rooted.
If you were to stop she may need to seek help from public services and they're stretched enough as it is!
So keep taking her inarticulate insults safe in the knowledge that's it's the purest form of care in the community.
the MP's need to look at themselves and their pay and expenses before taking money off the hard working people of the UK. it's no wonder i never vote for any of these jokers.
Chris R Irlam....and what do you base your comments on....What do you for a living????
Having worked in the military for 8 years and now for the police,why should I or any of my colleagues be penalised??
Do you not think the soldiers in Afghanistan should be given more money? People like you need to think before you engage mouth.Hilarious...6 MILLION bloaters??? Come on..what do you do for a living? Live off daddies money?
Ran Droid - I wouldn't be so sure if I was you.
As usual the Tories,the party of the people will attack the living standards of the lesser paid.It's always the public sector to blame,and pay the price.Why not propose a law ordering private companies to freeze pay for 2 years?They won't though because that's where their supporters are.
The other nonsense out this week,that if public schools fail then we would have hardly any army officers.Plenty of bright youngsters would be willing to be officers,and they are not all Eton scholars.
Scholars?what's wrong with the word Pupil?
To Ran Droid
Who screwed up for 17 yrs then?
Ron Gorton,
And the reasons why the public voted labour in over the conservatives was?. The conservatives will only play the game by the same rules, The public will always be the victim of the great rip-off tax bonanza for others.
ron your first comment summed it up pretty much. labour are failures. anyone who still supports them are fools.
only laura thinks they're still good. hahaha! have you got the same blinkers on that brown has? all you can see are the very few good bits that labour has done. but you cannot see the complete mess his party has left this country in.
if you are daft enough to carry on they way you are working to fund the lazy and workshy then you really are a fool.
although thinking about it are you actually one of the lazy workshy lot who are threatened by the prospect of you livelyhood being cut off?
those blinkers are so good you cannot even see around you how the majority of people are fed up of funding the wealfare state!
maybe the tories are not the best choice. but really the only real alternative. the liberals are a bunch of ditherers who cannot make their minds up on anything.
and all you'll be able to hit back at me for is the way i write my posts! as usual! try to bully the opposition! change the record!!