Wage restraint remains one of the main hopes for rectifying Britain’s budget deficit – due to reach £175bn this year – despite the opposition to a pay freeze voiced on Monday by public sector unions.

Steve Bundred, the head of the Audit Commission, ignited the debate about pay at the weekend when he argued that freezing public sector pay was “a pain-free way of cutting public spending”, citing the fact that the total pay bill is large, workers in the state sector have done well over the past decade and changes can be forced through relatively quickly.