LOW PAY: Local government staff are refusing to accept a one per cent rise in pay after five years of a virtual pay freeze.

Unison urged the Local Government Association to return to negotiations yesterday.

The call comes after a consultative ballot showed more than two thirds of Unison’s 600,000 local government members turned down the employer’s offer.

It is estimated that those working in councils and school administration have suffered a 20 per cent pay drop since 2009.

POVERTY: Public-health experts urged Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday to take action on the hunger crisis.

The Lancet published an open letter from 170 members of the UK Faculty for Public Health warning that a growing number of people earned too little to meet “their most basic nutritional needs.”

EDUCATION: Students and staff have joined forces to protest at a northern university’s plans to ditch modern language courses.

Managers at the University of Salford in Greater Manchester have announced plans to drop the courses after 2017.

University and College Union regional official Martyn Moss said: “Staff and students are united in their opposition to plans to axe foreign language courses at Salford.”

JUSTICE: The government’s draconian justice reforms hit a spectacularly embarrassing hurdle yesterday when David Cameron’s QC brother had a case thrown out due to legal-aid cuts.

Alexander Cameron QC successfully argued that a fair trial was not possible in a multimillion-pound fraud case as his five legal-aided clients could not find barristers of “sufficient competence.”

The government has cut fees for barristers and solicitors in such cases by 30 per cent.