Public rejects plans for regional pay

A survey of more than 1,000 adults found that only one in four supported the idea of different wage rates for nurses, teachers and other workers in different parts of the country.

Around two-thirds said that the plans should be dropped and a similar number described regional pay as unfair.

Three out of four Liberal Democrat supporters and just over half of Tories didn't want the plans to go ahead.

Unions have warned that local pay rates would make it harder for schools and hospitals in poorer areas of the country to recruit staff, because wages in those areas would be reduced.

And industrial relations Professor Roger Seifert slammed the government scheme as "unworkable" and as an attack on trade unionism, telling the Star: "This is all about breaking national pay bargaining in order to weaken the unions and marginalise collective bargaining.

"Regional pay is unworkable in the UK because labour market boundaries do not coincide with traditional administrative areas in health, local government including fire and police.

"It is an absurdity in practice because you can live in a poor area and travel to work in a richer area and receive higher pay, thus the main consequence is more people travelling from A to B to C as they seek higher regional pay without higher housing costs."

Accounting Professor Prem Sikka warned of the devastation to communities if the policy was enacted.

"The government seems hell-bent on creating new ghettoes, destroying morale at work and finding new scapegoats for the crisis caused by speculators, bankers and gamblers," he told the Star.

"Instead it should be focusing on investment, economic growth and harnessing workers' involvement in corporate government to rebuild the economy."

And TUC general secretary Brendan Barber urged Ministers to listen "to those MPs who live in less affluent parts of the UK and who are only too aware of the damaging impact that an even longer public-sector pay freeze could have on their local economies, which are already taking a hammering as families rein in their spending and austerity bites hard."