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Regional Pay

That is my next point, because the only good reason for taking forward the approach would be if it was thought that it would improve private sector job opportunities in the poor regions on the basis that public sector jobs appear to be relatively well paid and crowd out private sector employment. If that is happening, one piece of essential evidence—one killer fact—is needed

to show that, but it is not differences in the rates of pay in the two sectors, because that reflects a range of things such as job profiles and qualifications. We need evidence to show that as the number of public sector jobs increased in such regions, the number of unfilled vacancies for comparable employment in the private sector grew. That would be the clinching fact, but there is no such evidence. In fact, vacancies in the public sector in the north take longer to fill, because 50% of them are out for eight or more weeks compared with 15% in the private sector. Jobs that pay a living wage and for which skills exist get snapped up. Vacancies do not abound in the private sector except where there are definite skills shortages, and that is because of unemployment. There is no parallel difficulty with failing to fill public sector vacancies in better-off areas.

In the absence of that one piece of clinching evidence, which simply is not there, one could take a barrow-boy view that one could none the less get away with paying people less in the public sector in less advantaged areas, and especially get away with lower pay for the less well-paid, thus banking a cash saving for the state. I understand that argument, but it would be a wholly inappropriate way for a state to behave. It would be inappropriate for the state to discriminate simply by doing what can it get away with. We do not pay women or ethnic minorities less because they might be willing to work for less. If it was easy to get people to take the king’s shilling in the north, would we offer them sixpence instead?