New UK finance minister Zahawi urges caution on public sector pay

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s new finance minister Nadhim Zahawi said on Wednesday the government needed to be very careful about increases in public sector pay, cautioning that it needed to be fiscally responsible and avoid driving inflation higher.

“The important thing is to get inflation under control, be fiscally responsible,” he told Sky News.

“The first thing we’ve got to do is make sure that we are really careful about, whether it’s public sector pay, that inflation doesn’t continue to be fuelled.”

(Reporting by Kate Holton and William James; editing by William Schomberg)