PAY rises are not the cause of the cost-of-living crisis — they are the solution to it, National Education Union leader Kevin Courtney told a union rally on Saturday.

At the packed closing rally of the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom’s weekend conference Mr Courtney said ministers were wrong to claim wage rises would drive inflation and rejected the idea that collapsing living standards could be blamed on the war in Ukraine.

The war was a cause of the cost-of-living crisis but only in the sense that a loud noise can cause an avalanche, he said, saying years of real-terms cuts to workers’ wages had been like the snow building up before the catastrophe.