Raise pay and end strikes, says senior Tory

The government needs to “get real” and raise public sector pay to end strikes, a Conservative peer has said.

In an interview with the BBC, Lord Balfe said union members were “not militants”.

Instead, they are “wealth creators” with a valid claim about pay not keeping up with the rising cost of living, the BBC reported.

Richard Balfe, a former Labour MEP and the president of the Balpa airline pilots’ union, was David Cameron’s envoy to unions during a dispute over austerity and public sector pensions.

In the interview he reportedly said that government needed to raise pay in the current financial year as well as the next, adding that it should “get real” and realise that there are two sides to this argument.

Strikers “have a right to a decent standard of living”, he stated. “In the end [the government] will do far more damage to the economy by running it through a series of strikes than they will by settling,”

He added that spending “a few billion” on pay awards is “a case of common sense”.