MPs will get a bumper £2,558 pay rise – just as Rachel Reeves is about to announce swingeing spending cuts and slash thousands of jobs. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) confirmed salaries would rise by 2.8% to £93,904 from April following a consultation.

It comes as the Chancellor is expected to axe thousands of civil service jobs in Wednesday’s spring statement, telling Sky News on Sunday that she was “confident” numbers could be reduced by 10,000. That was just days after Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall announced plans to make it harder to claim Personal Independence Payments, which are expected to hit the disabled and long-term sick. The Cabinet Office is also expected to tell government departments to slash 15% off their administrative budgets to save £2.2billion a year by 2029-30.

John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers will be frustrated that while their own income is squeezed, MPs will face no such hardship.

“Despite overseeing a soaring tax burden and crumbling public services, Britain’s politicians are once again being rewarded despite their litany of failures.

“MPs’ pay should be tied to GDP per capita, so that their earnings rise only when the country prospers.”

The leader of the biggest civil service union said any cuts will hit frontline services after years of underfunding.

Public and Commercial Services union general secretary Fran Heathcote said: “The impact of making cuts will not only disadvantage our members but the public we serve and the services they rely on.

“We’ve heard this before under Gordon Brown, when cuts were made to backroom staff and consequences of that was chaos.”

FDA general secretary Dave Penman told ITV: “We’re talking about something that’s close to 10% of the entire salary bill of the Civil Service over the next three to four years.

“The Civil Service is about half a million staff. So that could be up to 50,000 staff who would go.”

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said on Sunday: “We have made a commitment to reduce the administrative costs of the Civil Service by 15% over the next five years. We haven’t set any headcount reduction targets on that.”

Mike Clancy, general secretary of Prospect, said there must be “a realistic assessment of what the Civil Service doesn’t do in future as a result of these cuts”.

“Public servants in both ‘back office’ and ‘frontline’ roles will both be critical to delivering on the Government’s missions, and the Government must recognise that many civil servants are working in ‘frontline’ roles,” he said.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has also hinted that police forces will also face cuts, although he said neighbourhood policing would be protected.

Ms Reeves’s confirmation of plans to cut civil service numbers comes after a backlash, including in the party’s own ranks, to cuts to welfare spending and a decision to slash the aid budget to fund a boost to defence spending.

Ms Reeves was asked about some people on the left of the party who think she is “wielding the axe” and fear that Labour austerity is on the table.

She told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “Last year, I put £100billion more into capital spending than the previous government had committed to, we put more than £20billion into the National Health Service.

“That is a far cry from what we’ve seen under Conservative governments in the last 14 years.”