Public Sector Pay

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Workers have suffered the longest stagnation of wages since a royal prince was about to get married—Prince George, the son of Queen Victoria—when Disraeli and Gladstone were in No. 10 Downing Street and trade unions were illegal, 150 years ago. The hardest hit have been public servants, with a 4.4% increase since 2010 against a background of a 22% cost-of-living increase.

Who are the public servants we are talking about? The Unison home help I met last year who was buying Easter eggs—“Is the council paying for them?” I asked, to be answered, “No, I am buying them myself and taking them around to all the people I care for, because some of them never see anyone else from one month to the next.” Tracey the neonatal intensive care nurse who nursed little Liam, who died seven times, back to life. The headteacher, teaching assistant and teacher in Kingstanding who were rescuing children from desperate poverty by turning around their prospects. They took one particular young boy from the bottom of the class to the top, despite the fact that he came from a household with no carpets, no curtains and no cupboards, with clothes stored in bin bags—acute poverty, but the school turned his life around. The police officers who chased the armed bank robber and recovered for Lucy her children, who had been hijacked by him as he sped away from the police. None so noble as those who care, none so noble as those who save lives and nurse the sick back to health, none so noble as those who provide ladders of opportunity, particularly for the poorest in our society, and none so noble as those who put their life at risk to help save the lives of others.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jack Dromey]

Because of the pressure of time, I will not, so that more people can speak.

The reward of those public servants is rising demand, rising workload and falling living standards. That is the impact of not only pay restraint but major cuts to, for example, local government budgets, leading in turn to problems with increments, shift changes and fewer people being employed, so those left having to do more. In our constituencies we can all see the impact on them and their families, as they have to turn to debt advice, pawning household goods, taking out payday loans and food banks, such as the home carer I met in a food bank in my constituency—a proud woman with two kids who loved her job but could not make ends meet without going to the food bank.

If public servants are suffering, so too are public services, through the turnover of labour and the stress on staff—very often, staff complements are stretched to the maximum and those who work in public services are demoralised. There is an impact on local economies, because if public servants get a pay rise, they do not salt away their money into Cayman Islands bank accounts; they spend it in the local economy, creating wealth and jobs. There is a grotesque contrast between the way that public servants are treated and what has been revealed in the paradise papers. This is a Britain where we have a Conservative Government that stand back and allow tax dodgers to get away with it, and then the Prime Minister says during the general election campaign to a nurse that there is no such thing as a magic money tree. Yes, there is, and they grow on the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Jersey, helping the wealthy to avoid their responsibility to society.

I am grieved because I am from a family of public servants: when my dad came off the roads he was a train driver on the London underground; my mum was a nurse; my Uncle Mick, who lived with us, was a street cleaner. They believed in public services, as the country believes now in public services and public servants, but public servants have been let down by a failing, uncaring Government. It is interesting that a monastic vow of silence has been taken by those opposite, who have been reluctant to get up and defend what their Government are doing. The unmistakable message from this debate is that they may stay quiet but we will not. Labour is on the side of public servants.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I wish to declare an interest; I used to be employed by Unison, which brought forward the petition and also donated to my general election campaign, together with Unite and GMB.

The Government’s austerity agenda has not only done great damage to our public sector services but brought our NHS to the brink of collapse. Indeed, in Hartlepool, our local hospital is at risk of haemorrhaging services, which is unacceptable to the people. I know from experience that relentless cuts and redundancies have led to remaining staff being over-stretched and under extreme pressure. For more years than I care to remember, those same workers have suffered pay restraints and pay caps. In the light of inflation, that has meant, in effect, that they have suffered a real-terms pay cut. It is a sad indictment of the situation created by this Government that health workers and other public sector workers in my constituency are resorting to food banks.

Things have got so bad that Unison gives out school uniform grants and other welfare provisions for those trapped in in-work poverty, and local branches increasingly issue food bank vouchers to their members who are in need. It is unacceptable that this situation has arisen and that NHS and other public sector workers are struggling to get by on low pay. The pay cap has been cited as one of the reasons why nurses have been leaving the profession in droves, yet its main purpose—addressing Government debt—has failed. Since the cap was introduced, Government debt has grown by around 50%, to reach £1.7 trillion in May this year. Our hard-working NHS staff should not suffer the burden of propping up—

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

My hon. Friend has probably heard Ministers say how wonderful our public services are and that what staff and our emergency services do is wonderful. But does he agree that the best thing that the Government could do is to improve on the recommendations of the wages board for a big increase—not the one that the Government might be proposing? More importantly, does he agree that that the Government should put their money where their mouth is, and give those staff a decent increase?

[Mike Hill]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The Government’s words are hollow when they say that they will look at the pay review bodies but they have not committed to the recommendations of those pay bodies.

Our hard-working NHS staff should not suffer the burden of propping up the Government’s failed and farcical fiscal policy. They deserve a pay rise and they deserve it now.