Antonia Bance
Main Page: Antonia Bance (Labour - Tipton and Wednesbury)Department Debates - View all Antonia Bance's debates with the Cabinet Office
(2 days, 7 hours ago)
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Pat McFadden
The hon. Gentleman is right about the need for robust research. I do not analyse the research projects one by one, but I thank him for his service, and underline what I have said a few times today: the best insurance that we can have in responding to another crisis like the one that we went through some years ago is the underlying strength of the country and the NHS. That is why we have made the decisions to put resources into the NHS to help to turn it around and make it stronger in the future than it is today.
Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)
I spent the pandemic as a trade unionist at the TUC, supporting Frances, now Baroness, O’Grady in her fight for the rights to safety of working people. The covid inquiry heard time and again about the impact of the pandemic on those with low wages and insecure work—people who had to go into work even when it was not safe because otherwise they could not feed their families, and who were disproportionately from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Will the Minister ensure that the new national vulnerability map treats insecure workers as vulnerable for the purpose of crisis planning and resilience, and will he ensure that the unions are key stakeholders in building that resilience in the UK?
Pat McFadden
My hon. Friend is right to underline the need to thank the key workers, many of whom were low paid and many of whom did come from ethnic minority backgrounds. They kept the country going, and sometimes had to put themselves at risk to help and protect the rest of us. I thank my hon. Friend and those who represent working people for the work that they did during the pandemic.