Apsana Begum
Main Page: Apsana Begum (Independent - Poplar and Limehouse)Department Debates - View all Apsana Begum's debates with the HM Treasury
Public Sector Pay 2024-25
Apsana Begum Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
The impact of the staffing crisis in the Department for Work and Pensions is creating an
“epidemic of mental ill health”.
That is according to emails received by the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents civil servants. Does my hon. Friend agree that the situation requires urgent interventions from the Government and that one of those urgent interventions needs to be to raise the pay of the 25% of PCS union members in the DWP who are currently paid below the real living wage?
Beth Winter
I totally agree. The PCS union has produced a number of very comprehensive reports outlining the devastating impact that the cost of living crisis is having on the mental health and wellbeing of its staff. I recommend that the Minister and those on the Benches opposite read those reports.
This comes after a two-year pay freeze between 2011 and 2013 and the four-year pay cap of 1% from 2013 to 2017, which preceded the obliteration of pay awards by inflation over the past two years. The TUC has estimated that the average public sector worker is earning £177 a month less in real terms compared with 2010. That is based on ONS pay statistics. Unison and the NEU have briefed me on the real-terms reduction in the value of wages for their members. Teachers are getting £12,000 less in real terms since 2010; social workers £15,000 less; and paramedics £16,000 less. The key workers that keep this country going are being driven into poverty by this Government. Putting money in workers’ pockets is the way out of the cost of living crisis.
The Governor of the Bank of England repeatedly warned last year that pay rises were inflationary, but provided no evidence. Some organisations have challenged that statement. For instance, the Institute for Public Policy Research said,
“Tax-funded…public sector pay restoration…is not significantly inflationary”—
again, I recommend that the Government Minister reads the documents. That is why in the past two years we have seen the most significant period of industrial action in 40 years.
The ONS states that over 5 million days of work have been lost to industrial action since the start of the current cost of living crisis. The Government’s response has been not to address the retention and recruitment crisis, but to curtail trade union freedoms by bringing in the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023. In Wales we have seen junior doctors on strike this week because of public sector pay cuts. Yes, they are administered by the Welsh Government, but the purse strings remain here in Westminster, which is responsible. I joined those junior doctors this week, as I have joined all public sector workers, as have all Labour Members here. Our solidarity remains strong with those workers.