"After the longest wage squeeze for 200 years, working people need an approach to inflation that protects jobs and that helps protect pay and living standards.

The Bank of England has responded to rising inflation caused by energy issues and problems in global supply chains with interest rate hikes that have taken the interest rate from 0.1 to 1.75 per cent over nine months.

They now predict that the impact of this will be a long recession and the loss of one million jobs.

At the end of this year, workers are expected to face a hit to real pay of minus 7.75 per cent – TUC analysis of quarterly figures shows this will be the steepest decline for exactly a century. The longest pay decline since the Napoleonic wars is not only unended, but severely intensified.

Business had tremendous support from taxpayers during the pandemic. They should now help to counter inflation with greater profit restraint – especially energy firms. And the government must do more to get pay rising, starting with decent pay rises for public servants, a higher minimum wage and stronger right for working people and their unions to bargain for fair pay."

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