What is Rishi Sunak’s version of ‘fair’?

On the plane to Lithuania, the prime minister said that his approach to public sector pay embraces the need to ensure that pay rises are “fair, affordable and responsible”. If a pay rise is fair, it is fair to both sides, meaning that it is also affordable. If it’s affordable and fair it is, by definition, responsible. So the question is what does the PM mean by “fair”?

Is it fair for teachers, already working ridiculously long hours, to lose their planning, preparation, and assessment time regularly because staff shortage/absence means that extra lessons and duties must be covered? Is it fair that junior doctors receive such poor remuneration given the long hours and high level of responsibility they must manage? Or that nurses are run ragged trying to manage wards without enough staff and certainly without enough experienced staff?

This is in a climate of regular government criticism of the public sector, profligate levels of government spending in other areas (immigration control, Covid contracts, HS2, etc...), and expensive squabbling about economic dogma within this nasty, divisive Conservative Party. What does Rishi Sunak mean by “fair”? We should be told.

The chancellor has instructed ministers to find £2bn worth of cuts to help fund the forthcoming inevitably unsatisfactory pay rises. I would like to ask how the same level of productivity can be expected given that there will be fewer funds and, doubtless, fewer staff in the system?

Will the government be honest with the public and tell us what the public sector won’t be able to deliver given the latest cuts? Or will beleaguered councils and public sector employees be expected to exceed further their current workload in order to paper over the cracks in the government’s logic? And how would this be “fair”?

David Lowndes

Southampton

There has been much outrage about the £150,000 bill that Nicola Sturgeon has run up with her jaunt to the Cop27 meeting at which she was not a delegate. If she and her team had made it a one-way journey, I would not have complained. They never would be missed.

Similarly, it would benefit Scotland greatly if Lorna Slater spent our money on one final car trip out of Scotland!

Jill Stephenson

Edinburgh

As someone with a visceral hatred of anything to do with party politics, I’m unfailingly baffled by anyone who seems keen to make a point of declaring themselves a “long-term” voter or a “lifelong” member of a political party. How anyone can regard some blind, unthinking lifelong obeisance to one party as an intelligent mindful course of action is beyond me.

Surely, we can all see that party politics requires the subjugation of individual opinion and action by its MPs in favour of a blind acceptance of party instructions when it comes to voting? Being “in power” seems to be the only thing which counts. While we could play to stereotypes and say that the Tories are for the posh people and the Labour party for the working class, we see daily both sides act and flip flop around decisions to do with policies which are entirely and cynically geared towards scooping up more voters from the electorate irrespective of any historical or deep-rooted credo from days gone by.

Two things I’m proud of – being a lifelong reader of The Independent, for obvious reasons, and never having voted with a party “hat” on in my life. Frankly, it’s hard to see how this tribal mentality works out in moral or practical terms. Will dyed-in-the-wool Labour or Tory voters still vote for a candidate despite personal reservations about their honesty, probity, or ability? What then?

Surely the individual on the ballot paper should be the focus of our decisions... not the colour of their rosette. Until then electorate citizens will play second fiddle to a greater political yearning to hold onto power. Our horrible party-political system is a disingenuous plague upon society and disadvantages us every single day.

Steve Mackinder

Denver

The world’s population has now passed eight billion. As Boris Johnson cracks open champagne to celebrate the birth of Frank Alfred Odysseus – maybe his ninth child – I ask him to address the concerns of a more environmentally concerned Johnson who, in 2007’s Telegraph, stated that he “simply cannot understand why no one discusses this impending calamity, and why no world statesmen have the guts to treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

How can we witter on about tackling global warming, and reducing consumption, when we are continuing to add so relentlessly to the number of consumers?”

Johnson’s hypocrisy – Do-As-I-Say-Not-As-I Do – began long before Partygate.

Anthony Hentschel

Nailsworth