To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will publish the calculations for the Prime Minister’s statement that public sector pay demands would cost each household £1,000.

The £1000 per household figure is derived from dividing the total cost of an 11% increase in pay for all public sector workers in the UK in 2023/24 (£28bn) by the ONS’ latest estimate of the number of households in the UK (28.1m).

The use of an 11.1% increase in pay for all public sector workers as a total cost figure is in line with the calls of many unions for inflation-matching awards (the Consumer Prices Index in the 12 months to October 2022 was 11.1%. This was the most recent data point for CPI inflation at the time the calculation was made).

The total cost estimate of £28bn is derived using a costings model which takes outturn data on the total public sector pay bill for 2021/22, applies awards from 2022/23 (the impacts of which on pay bill per head were in the region of 5%) and then adds an 11.1% award in 2023/24. The model also applies standard assumptions on pay drift and workforce growth.