Public Sector Pay

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hanson. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for so eloquently leading the debate. As a GMB member, I feel privileged to be able to speak in a debate on pay and pay inequality, because it is surely one of the most important issues facing the United Kingdom today. I have had hundreds of emails from Unison members and hundreds of postcards from members of the Royal College of Nursing on this very issue. In summer 2016, the Prime Minister promised to fight against what she called the “burning injustices” in British society. This weekend, the four key members of the Prime Minister’s Social Mobility Commission resigned, citing little hope that the Government could deliver a more equal society. What more damning indication is there that the Government are failing?

[Graham Stringer in the Chair]

It is clear that this country has a problem with wealth inequality. A recent report by the Resolution Foundation states that 1% of adults own 14% of the nation’s assets. At the other end of the scale, 15% of the British people own no assets at all. The reality now is that wealth inequality is hitting public sector workers—our social workers, police officers and firefighters—who are the very backbone of our society. That is largely down to the public sector pay cap: one of the most iniquitous policies the Government have come up with, and a policy not just of this Government but of the previous coalition Government with the Liberal Democrats—one might note that they are not in the Chamber.

In 2010, when the coalition Government was formed, the country was told it needed to make sacrifices to reduce the national debt. David Cameron’s exact words— I am sure we all remember them—were:

“we’re all in this together”.

Seven long years later, debt is still rising. The date for the eradication of debt, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith) said, has been pushed further and further back; and all our public sector is in crisis, because of the harsh austerity economics of those two Governments. All in all, the cost of living has risen by about 22%, while public sector pay has not just stagnated but fallen back, in real terms.

The Government have created a system in which the people we rely on most cannot afford to live in 21st-century Britain. To me, that does not scream of a society where we are all in it together; I am sure it does not to the other Members in the Chamber, either—or perhaps that is not true of all of them. Is it not entirely reasonable for public sector staff to ask what their sacrifice has been for? Is it not reasonable for nurses to ask why more and more of them are having to take second jobs, or use food banks, to feed their families? Is it not reasonable for firefighters to ask why 27% of their colleagues have contemplated suicide because of the stress of reduced budgets and increased pressures? Is it not reasonable for teachers to ask why teaching staff and their families across the south of England are ending up homeless because their wages have stagnated while rents have sky-rocketed?

I recently spoke to one of my constituents, who has worked in social care for more than 20 years. He explained the effect that what is essentially a seven-year wage cut has had on his life and his family’s lives. He could have put a down payment on a house, paid for his child to go to university, or saved up for a more comfortable retirement. Yet, despite it all, he told me how they would have accepted a temporary pay cap, to protect the services that he has dedicated his life to. He is not unique; that is the norm for public sector workers, not just in Leeds North West but throughout the country, and I am proud of him and all public sector workers.

While such people have had to make money stretch further, the services they work in have been slashed and they are working twice as hard for less money to keep cash-strapped services from collapse. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that the public sector faces a recruitment and retention crisis as a direct result of the pay cap. On any one day there are 90,000 vacancies for social care jobs in England. Just under 340,000 social care employees leave their job each year. Schools have been forced to increase money spent on advertising for teachers by 61%; that is money being wasted in the education system on recruitment rather than being spent on retaining excellent teachers.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Would it make sense for the Government to reverse the ludicrous tax cuts for the incredibly wealthy and corporations, amounting to some £19 billion, to fund public servants and end the pay cap?

[Alex Sobel]

That is an excellent point, and if the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) had stayed in her place she would have heard her question answered by my hon. Friend. It is right: corporation tax rates have fallen consistently, but large corporations have not paid their burden of taxation. If they did, it would be to the good of all society, including their own workers and shareholders.

The Metropolitan police have had to take the extreme measure of asking retired police officers to return to work to help them cope with demand. The argument is not only a moral one—although it is a moral one; clearly the pay cap is a false economy, and maintaining it is costing billions. It is not just the recruitment crisis that is costing the country billions; the TUC has also shown that the pay cap has meant public sector staff spending £48 billion less on the high street since it was introduced in 2010, undermining private sector as well as public sector jobs and pay. I have a simple question for Conservative Members—those who are left: who will you turn to when there is no one to put out the fire in your house, when no one keeps criminals off your streets, and there is no one to care for you when you are sick, old or unable to care for yourself? The hypocrisy of the Government is staggering. Praise is lavished upon public sector workers, but is not reflected in their pay packet. Praise does not pay the rent, feed a family, or heat a home.