Heather Sharp
Live reporter

We're now ending our live coverage of the government's pay offer to more than a million public sector workers, but there's lots more to read.

• Our story with details of the pay rises across the public sector is here
• For a look at whether the increases will feed inflation, take a look at this explainer
• Our story on why the offer is likely to signal the end of the teachers' strikes in England here

• There's a report with the latest on the junior doctors strike here.
• And our political correspondent Iain Watson's interview with Unite leaders Sharon Graham is here

This page was edited by Heather Sharp, Francesca Gillett and Marita Maloney. The writers were Lauren Turner, Gem O'Reilly, Andre Rhoden-Paul, James Harness, Anna Boyd, Adam Durbin and Emily Atkinson.

Image source, Getty Images

We're wrapping up our live page shortly. Here's what you need to know about the day's events.

What's been announced?

More than a million public sector workers - including teachers, doctors and police - have been offered pay rises of between 5% and 7% after the government accepted the recommendations of the eight independent pay review bodies.

Police and prison officers in England and Wales would get a 7% rise under the proposals, with teachers and junior doctors in England getting 6.5% and 6% respectively.

PM Rishi Sunak said it would be funded by government departments finding savings and increasing visa changes and the NHS surcharge for migrants. But ministers said no frontline services at schools will be cut to fund it.

How have the unions reacted?

Four education unions say the deal is enough for them to end their dispute and they're going to advise members to accept.

But the junior doctors union, the BMA, says the 6% offered is a real-terms pay cut and strikes will continue. The pay offer comes as junior doctors begin a five-day walkout today.

The Unite union described it as a "rob Peter to pay Paul" situation and predicted service cuts and a new wave of industrial action.

What have politicians said?

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says this is a final offer and would "mean choices" - but is "not about cuts". Health Secretary Steve Barclay says it's a fair offer and a chance "for the NHS to move forward".

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey accused the PM of "taking a wrecking ball to our public services" and said it would have a "devastating impact" on hospitals and schools across the country.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the pay offers were "subject to negotiation" and he wouldn't "wade into that" but "if Labour cannot break the suffocating hold of low wages we will have failed".

Emily Atkinson
Live reporter

I've been in touch with junior doctor who is not striking. He sees the action as "futile" and the demand for a 35% pay increase as "unattainable".

He says that while many of his colleagues have not come to work on today's walkout, "there is a distinct lack of fervour about it", with little enthusiasm for picket lines and the momentum of the strikes waning.

In our conversation by text, ahead of his night shift, he says that while the government's offer of a 6% pay rise could be seen as "generous" in the context of public sector pay, "it's a tiny plaster over a gaping wound".

He said the pay increase does "essentially nothing in the long term" to address the low pay offered in return for such "necessary and challenging work".

"There is still zero financial incentive to being a doctor versus anything in the private sector - and that's the real long-term issue that this 6% doesn't even come close to fixing."

Anthony Reuben
BBC News

There were various options to fund public sector pay rises.

The government could raise taxes, which would reduce demand and could in turn reduce inflation. But the government is reluctant to do that during a cost-of-living crisis.

It could just print the money, but that is widely considered to be inflationary.

And the government says it will not borrow the money. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said in a speech on Monday: "More borrowing is itself inflationary". It is not clear why that would be the case.

"If the government borrows more it is either to spend more or tax less, both of which increase demand," says Paula Bejarano Carbo from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research think tank.

"It's therefore the spending or the tax cutting that can be inflationary, rather than the borrowing in itself."

We asked the Treasury to explain how borrowing increases inflation but have not yet heard back.

You can read more here.

The public sector pay deal will be a "very big challenge" for many squeezed public sector bodies, the chairwoman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee has warned.

The government has said it will ask government departments to find savings to pay for the pay rise, but Dame Meg Hillier told BBC Radio 4 they were "already overstretched".

The Labour MP said: "My committee of course looks a lot at hospitals, schools and other bits of the public sector and we know that they're already very squeezed.

"So it's going to be some very painful choices for frontline leaders about how they're actually going to fund this."

To describe it she said it is "a bit robbing Peter to pay Paul".

She said the government had to deal with current strikes, but said it was storing up other challenges for the future.

Why the pressure on pay, pensions and benefits is not going awaypublished at 20:03 British Summer Time 13 July 2023

20:03 BST 13 July 2023

Faisal Islam
Economics editor

Today’s tricky pay decisions came in the wake of some awful long-term tax and spending projections released by independent forecaster the Office for Budget Responsibility this morning.

Its basic message is that we are now in a new world of having both a large national debt and high and rising interest rates.

In particular the UK’s public finances are set to suffer even more than other countries, because a quarter of our debt is linked to inflation which at 8.7% is stubbornly high. This is bad news in current circumstances - and it is also very short-term.

When factoring in plausible future energy shocks, the OBR can see a path to an astonishing national debt of 300% or even 400% of national income in 2070.

While some might rise an eyebrow about forecasts over this timeframe, the point is that the OBR fears a sluggishly growing UK economy with a high debt and high interest rates risks falling into a debt spiral where the cost of paying your debt becomes increasingly difficult to manage.

It points to fears the UK is spending everything on fighting the consequences of inflation rather than investing in the future.

So the pensions triple lock is permanently increasing the generosity of the state pension. Public sector pay is going up in cash terms, and with inflation remaining sticky, and not falling as rapidly as elsewhere (US inflation has fallen to 3%, France to 4.8%) the pressure on the pensions triple lock, pay and benefits is not going away.

We've been hearing a lot from those who say the pay offer is not enough or will have a knock-on impact elsewhere - here's a reminder of some of what we've heard from the government today.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says his government's offer - which he describes as final - means choices have to be made, but insists "it's not about cuts".

"It's just about focusing on public sector workers' pay rather than other things," he says, adding changes can be made without "impacting frontline service delivery".

He says it is a "fair deal for the British taxpayer".

Health Secretary Steve Barclay says it's a "fair offer, a fair settlement" and there's "opportunity now for the NHS to move forward".

He says the government "hugely value the contribution of doctors" and recognise the pressures they're under - but he also is adamant it's a final offer.

And Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said: "We want to pay people who are doing a really important job - fairly. But we can't fund that in an award that is inflationary. So we are not going to fund it by extra borrowing."

Public sector workers in line for a pay rise still face a real terms pay cut over two years despite the new increase to their wages, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies says.

Paul Johnson said the government had made the "right choice" to implement the pay review body recommendations.

"The amount of money we're talking about is relatively modest in terms of the full education and health budgets," he tells the BBC.

He notes, however, that ministers have "very little fiscal room for manoeuvre" in the face of other pressures on government budgets. These include "ever increasing interest rates", which, he explains, increase the amount the government is having to spend on interest on its debt.

Asked if the pay rises could be inflationary, Johnson replied: "These increases in public sector pay are not going to lead to increases in the private sector.

"The public sector are following behind the private sector, not the other way around. That's not going to cause inflation."

What could cause inflation would be if the government were to borrow a lot more to pay for the increases, he said, but added that the government explicitly said they would not resort to this.

"I don't see this as a problem for inflation," he adds

Gem O'Reilly
Live reporter

Image source, Dr James Collins

We've been hearing from junior doctors about their reaction to the offer of their 6% pay rise.

Dr James Collins from East Sussex says "it's a step in the right direction but it will absolutely not be enough".

James, who is an anaesthetist in Eastbourne, has been picketing for months over pay and working conditions.

He explained the raise is less than half of what Scotland are offering - 17.5% over two years - and that he doesn't think it goes "anywhere near close to resolving the dispute for the majority of doctors".

It will also result in a significant disparity between Scotland and England. But the Scottish deal isn't perfect either, it's a compromise, he says.

James also expressed concern around the rise being unfunded and that the NHS is already "cut back to the bone" so he doesn't understand where the money can be taken from.

While the headlines have focused mainly on teachers and doctors, rises announced today also include 7% increases for prison officers and police, and 5% for the armed forces.

But Steve Gillan, general secretary of the Prison Officers Association (POA) said: "Once again, our members have received a below inflation pay rise no matter how it is dressed up."

He added that members were suffering from the cost-of-living crisis and still waiting for "back-dated pay which was due in April of this year."

The POA said it will "not back down" in the wake of these pay rises.

The national chairman of the union, Mark Fairhurst said "yet another below-inflation award" would not convince workers to stay in the service or improve their standard of living.

The leader of one of the biggest public and private sector unions, Sharon Graham of Unite, has called Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's plan to fund public sector increases a "rob Peter to pay Paul situation".

She tells the BBC's Iain Watson that staff could end up "working harder and for longer" and workers and communities could see services cut.

She adds: "We know from history, it will mean cuts."

Graham continues: "This is a rob Peter to pay Paul situation. They are paying for some of it but saying the rest - £2bn - is going to come out of cuts to services. All this is going to do is stress people out."

She adds that she believes there will be "a new wave of industrial action" if services are cut.

Image source, PA Media

Here's a little bit more from the British Medical Association union, which represents doctors and medical students.

The offer of a 6% pay rise for NHS medics came on the day junior doctors in England began a five-day strike - their longest yet - over salaries.

Prof Phil Banfield, chair of the BMA council, says the government has "missed a huge opportunity to put a credible proposal on the table to end strikes".

"This uplift still fails tens of thousands of frontline staff and is unlikely to do much to help retain a beleaguered, burnt out, undervalued workforce," he adds.

He says consultants "are likely to continue to take industrial action" but remain "willing to talk".

Earlier, he'd told BBC Radio 4's World at One the offer was "a reasonable starting point for us to progress the dispute" - but added that the PM's insistence he would no longer negotiate showed a "fundamental lack of understanding of the situation".

The schools minister Nick Gibb has given also a “cast iron guarantee” that no “frontline services” at schools or colleges will be cut to fund pay rises.

He was speaking to BBC Radio Norfolk after today’s announcement that the government had accepted the recommendations of the pay review bodies in full.

Gibb said that many “difficult decisions” were having to be taken to fund the 6.5% rise being offered to teachers.

However, he was unable to give any specific examples “yet” of what he called a “re-prioritisation” to make the required savings because that was “being worked through”.

Tony Roe
BBC East Midlands political editor

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan says school budgets won't be raided to cover the cost of teachers' pay rises.

Asked by the BBC if that's where the money would come from, she says: "There's no point giving it with one hand and taking it with another. No, absolutely not."

She adds: "What we've been doing is painstakingly going through every single budget line and looking at where we think we don't need to use all of the money that was anticipated.

"So we think there'll be underspends for certain things or certain things will have changed."

Pressed on whether that would cover all of the pay rises, she replies yes - adding this is the case for further education college teachers too.

The Trades Union Congress' general secretary welcomes the recommendation of a 6.5% pay rise for school teachers.

Paul Nowak says extra government funding for the wage increase, so it doesn't come from school budgets, is a "positive step forward".

But he says other public sector workers - which aren't getting extra funding - may be questioning whether they can pay for those rises without cutting other services.

"What they won't want to see is Peter being robbed to pay Paul."

Image source, Pool

Staying with the pay award for junior doctors, Health Secretary Steve Barclay has said today's public sector pay rise is a "fair offer" and an opportunity for the NHS to move forward.

Speaking to reporters, he said "It's now time we move forward. Nurses, paramedics, porters, many others within the NHS, have reached agreement with the government.

"An increase where all doctors in training will get between £3,000 and almost £5,000, some consultants will get over £7,000 in terms of pay rise is the opportunity to have that final settlement and to move forward and focus on cutting waiting lists and getting treatment quicker to patients."

He explained despite there being no more negotiation on pay, his door is open to discuss with the BMA working conditions and how to support doctors in training.

Image source, .

We can bring you some more comments now from the PM's spokesman, who says there will be "no more talks on pay" after the BMA criticised the pay offer for junior doctors.

He said: “I don’t think the prime minister could have been clearer today. There will be no more talks on pay."

The 6% pay rise announced today is in line with pay review body recommendations, but below the 35% that doctors have been asking for.

On the BMA's preferred increase, the spokesman said: "That is simply not fair to taxpayers. From the deal, independent set by the PRBs (pay review bodies), junior doctors will see around a 9% uplift to pay.

“Anyone… would think that is a significant increase. Certainly we do and we will not countenance borrowing more money or increasing taxation to go beyond what the independent pay review bodies have recommended.”

Peter Saull
Political reporter

I’ve just got back from the daily briefing that the prime minister’s official spokesperson gives to Westminster journalists.

Earlier, Downing Street promised to give us more detail on how the government plans to pay for wage hikes of up to 7% - at a cost to the Treasury of more £2bn.

Just over half of the money will be raised by forcing migrants to pay more to apply for visas and access the NHS.

The rest of the savings will come from “reprioritisation” within government departments.

Number 10 provided some examples of what that means in practice:

• a recruitment freeze on civil servants in the Ministry of Defence
• a reduction in civil service traineeships and “skills boot camps” in the Department for Education.

Despite a flurry of questions from reporters, the spokesperson couldn’t be more specific than that.

Concerns have been raised about cuts to frontline services, but Downing Street stressed that schools and the NHS will be protected.

Number 10 also insisted that the prime minister didn’t believe that the pay rises announced today would stoke inflation.

The pay rises announced today apply to a range of jobs - but the different situations in different sectors mean varying reactions.

• Teachers: They've been offered a 6.5% rise, and have been promised extra money to fund it - meaning schools do not have to use money from their existing budgets. Because of this, teaching unions are generally happy. The four teaching unions even issued a joint statement with the government saying the offer recognises how vital teachers are.
• Doctors: Unions say the 6% offered marks another real-terms pay cut and does not address years of below-inflation pay. It criticised the government for not negotiating, as happened with doctors with Scotland. The unions are also unhappy as the government has not promised extra money to fund the rise so departments will have to make savings, raising fears there could be cuts. The current five-day junior doctors strikes, and two days of consultant walkouts next week, will still go ahead.
• Police: They've been offered the highest increase - 7%. The Police Federation of England and Wales says officers will have mixed feelings - because it's not as bad as rumoured, but it doesn't fully address inflation. It's also concerned that cuts may be made to pay for the raise.
• Prison officers: They have also been offered 7%. The POA union - which represents prison workers who, like police, do not have the right to strike - gave its initial reaction on Twitter, saying in real-terms it's another pay cut but that it will scrutinise the deal further.
• Civil servants: The FDA union called the 5.5% offer for senior civil servants "fair and reasonable", but Prospect union is unhappy, saying "the government has not allocated extra money to pay for it". Prospect is also annoyed at the plan by Rishi Sunak to cut recruitment at the Ministry of Defence to help pay for the pay rises.

Image source, Sally Haslewood

Relieved parents are coming to us now with reaction to today's news that months of school strikes could finally be coming to an end. Many had to take days off work or sort alternative childcare as schools fully or partially closed during the national strike action.

Mum Sally Haslewood, from Harrogate, says she's pleased her two daughters, in years seven and nine, might finally get a full year of undisrupted education.

"I'm absolutely delighted," she said. "It's a huge relief to think when they go back in September they should get a full year of school with no disruption for the first time in three years.

"It's been a nightmare generally for parents to try and plan around it, and it's been unsettling for the children. So all in all it's just fantastic news."

Dad-of-two Sam, in Brighton, said he supported the striking teachers and is delighted with today's resolution.

"I did have a lot of sympathy for the strikers because I know how difficult the schools situation has been - it feels like a service which has been underfunded," he said. "But more action in the autumn was feeling like a bit of a nightmare, so to have that taken off the table is a big relief."