Retail Price Index (RPI) inflation, which includes mortgage interest payments, rose to 4.1 per cent last month, from 4 per cent in December.
However even the capitalist press yesterday was treating the official 4.1 per cent figure with scorn, estimating that the average family was facing a rise in the cost of living over the past 12 months of between £1,300 and £1,700.
Family budgets are being wrecked, with petrol shooting upwards by 20 per cent, food prices by ten per cent and mortgage costs up by eight per cent.
Petrol prices rose by 1.3p in January, to 103.9p per litre, but speculation that Chancellor Darling may hold off a planned 2p per litre increase in fuel duty in April were squashed by a government spokesman, who said the hike was already accounted for.
In response, a UNISON spokesman told News Line: ‘How the government can expect public sector workers to swallow a two per cent pay limit when inflation is running at double that, is beyond us. It should be in no doubt that we will continue our campaign for fair pay for public sector workers.’
Asked if UNISON would strike against a staged, below-inflation pay deal such as was imposed on health and council workers last year, the spokesman replied: ‘I can’t answer that question at the moment.
‘I’m not going to answer the strike question. It’s not in my power to say whether there will be strike action. We are a democratic union and it will be up to our members if there is strike action.’
Brian Strutton, National Secretary for the GMB public services section said: ‘The government should forget artificial pay limits and enter into proper negotiations on the basis of these inflation figures.’
A TUC spokesman told News Line: ‘We’re waiting to see what will happen in the next round of pay negotiations. Clearly below inflation pay deals are in fact pay cuts and will not be acceptable.’
A PCS spokesman said: ‘The millions of public sector workers across the UK aren’t stupid. They know it’s not their pay fuelling inflation and the government need to stop hiding behind discredited arguments that they are the cause of inflation.’
Dave Wiltshire, National Secretary of the All Trades Unions Alliance (ATUA) said ‘The figures blow a hole in any argument that inflation is caused by excessive pay demands.
‘The drive by the Brown government to hold wages to two per cent and implement three-year pay deals is designed to drive down the standard of living of workers and their families to the extent that it will be impossible for people to live.
‘With the cost of living increased in the past 12 months by approximately £1,300 and inflation running at 4.1 per cent on the government’s own dubious figures, workers are facing losing their houses through repossession and being unable to pay the massive fuel bills now being imposed.
‘For the TUC leaders to say that this is “not acceptable” is grotesque. Not only is it not acceptable, it has to be fought.
‘Every union leadership that condemns wage restraint in the face of raging inflation must come out and say openly how they intend to fight.
‘This attack can only be fought through strike action to bust this government’s plans to pauperise the working class.
‘Only a political strike across the whole union movement, aimed at bringing down the government and replacing it with a workers government, can answer the seriousness of this attack.
‘Union leaders who deliberately avoid this struggle and bleat that we must “wait and see what happens” or that nothing can be done except protest are begging Brown to change his mind, and must be thrown out of the labour movement.’
