NHS Pay

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Westminster Hall

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

It has been a year now since hospital beds started filling up. Since then, there have been more than 126,000 deaths: our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, friends, neighbours and colleagues—in the NHS, more colleagues than most. Last night, like many others, I reflected on a heartbreaking year of loss, but while last year was tragic, what happened was not unavoidable. Implementing the first lockdown just one week earlier, as advised, could have halved the early mortality rate. Our hospitals and NHS staff weathered a storm of the Government’s making.

Let us cast our minds back to March 2020. It seems implausible now that the Prime Minister was boasting about shaking hands with every person he met on a visit to a hospital with covid-19 patients. Edwina Currie compared him with Princess Diana. Others were less favourable. It has been revealed by the BBC this week that the Prime Minister said that the best thing would be to ignore the virus and that overreaction would do more harm than good.

The NHS is facing immense challenges, and overcoming them will be fundamental to its survival. There is the pandemic, of course, and the small matter of rolling out the most ambitious vaccination programme in the nation’s history. Not only is our NHS asked to bear the brunt of the pandemic; it is forced to do it with one hand tied behind its back. In February, NHS hospitals, mental health services and community providers were reporting a shortage of nearly 84,000 staff; 38,000 of those vacancies were for nurses—the enduring backbone of our national health service. A decade of underfunding, lack of accessible training and failure to prioritise healthcare workers have hit the NHS hard, but the Minister knows that—it is a situation of Government design.

The NHS is sick. It is underfunded and understaffed. Just as a sick patient is not aided by removing their medicine, the NHS will not be healed by cutting the pay of its workers. The Government’s and their spin doctors’ praise for the NHS has been almost evangelical. We have seen the Prime Minister clapping on our TV screens. We have heard Tory Ministers refer to NHS workers as heroes and angels. We saw the hyperbolic outburst reach fever pitch when the Health Secretary cried on national breakfast television. Most of the NHS workers I know have no desire for constant praise and adoration. They do not want to be called angels. They are skilled professionals who have worked and are working through a deadly pandemic. Most would be happy for their hospitals to be properly funded, for their patients to be given the best chance of survival and, finally, for a pay packet reflecting their workload. To cry hero, and then cut pay, is as manipulative and cruel as it is unsurprising, from a party that has systematically sought to undermine the health service and its workers.

The NHS has done so much more than just jobs during the pandemic. Its staff risked their lives every single day for our most vulnerable. They held the hands of those in the their final moments whose loved ones could not. They have been a bright flame of hope in a year filled with anxiety and fear. NHS workers have given us more than we can ever give back. Their compassion, bravery and will is something we may not ever be able fully to repay. The recognition of their work can be fulfilled by a decent pay rise.