UK  to raise visa fees to fund public sector pay hikes

UK Visa fees and health surcharges will go up significantly according to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The quantum of the increase hasn’t been decided yet.

Funding public sector pay raises

With this increase, the UK government will hike the salaries of employees in the public sector. These employees work in police, education and the health sector. Prime Minister Sunak expects that the wage hikes will rise between 6 and 7 percent.

However, he made clear that money for wage hikes won’t be raised by increasing taxes as that can cause inflation.

Explaining his stance, PM Sunak said, “If we’re going to prioritise paying public sector workers more, that money has to come from somewhere else because I’m not prepared to put up people’s taxes and I don’t think it would be responsible or right to borrow more because that would just make inflation worse. “

How bad is the inflation?

According to The Guardian, inflation in the UK is worse than in other major economies. UK’s inflation was at 8.7% in May, the same as in the previous month. Experts had predicted that there would be a fall in inflation because of declining energy prices.

Official figures had expected that the country’s consumer price index or CPI would come down to 8.4% in June, but that didn’t happen.

Though inflation has fallen sharply in the UK from 11.7% last year, household bills are rising the fastest in G7, The Guardian reports.

PM Sunak explained where he will get the money from for salary hikes.

He said, “.. we are going to increase the charges that we have for migrants who are coming to this country when they apply for visas and indeed something called the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS), which is the levy that they pay to access the NHS.”

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