Freezing civil service pay could save £800m


The Finance Committee has been advised by experts that a pay freeze for employees of the Civil Service in Northern Ireland could save as much as £800million, which would make a large dent in the £4billion that the Assembly has been told to cut by Westminster.

There are also suggestions that the health budget could be scrutinised to find savings despite some politicians saying that the £4.5billion pot would not be touched. The amount set aside for health is by far the largest department budget, and economist Victor Hewitt says that to say it is off the table when it comes to cuts would put the Assembly in the "corner when anything goes wrong over the next four years" as the "amount of room to manoeuvre ... would be seriously, seriously diminished."

A pay freeze, if introduced, would follow the trend set by many private sector companies who opted to avoid or minimise redundancies by introducing a freeze on salaries, and in many cases, on associated bonuses and benefits.



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