Public Sector Pay

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for presenting the petition in this debate, and I declare that I am a member of the trade union Unison.

Before being elected to represent my constituency in Parliament, I worked for a local authority and, along with my colleagues, was subject to the pay cap. Since the election, I have been contacted by many of my constituents who work in our essential public services and are struggling to make ends meet. They provide the services that keep our society going. One of my constituents emailed me recently and said:

“I am a highly skilled professional, and yet my pay packet does not reflect this…The Westminster Government’s public sector pay policy has eroded my salary year on year and caused me considerable hardship, including having to move out of the family home for 4 years to make ends meet…Many of my colleagues have left the profession and low pay and other poor working conditions, including excessive workload, are deterring new entrants.”

It is a travesty that we are seeing poor pay and conditions result in people leaving the public sector jobs they love. Local government has huge statutory responsibilities and our local government workers are carrying out necessary, vital and admirable duties in ensuring that our communities are healthy, educated, housed, cared for in old age and living in a clean and safe environment. As the savage and ongoing cuts that local authorities have faced since 2010 have resulted in redundancies, those still working for local authorities are not only enduring unprecedented workloads but, to add insult to injury, are seeing their pay capped, which is in effect a massive pay cut for them.

As in all our public services, the fact that those workers and their families are struggling makes it clear that the Government are failing in their economic and moral arguments, and are oblivious to what makes society flourish. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) pointed out, most public sector bodies are the biggest employers in their borough, town or city, and the knock-on effect of the pay cap affects the local businesses that serve the local workforce. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North referred to in her excellent speech, in the House of Commons Chamber we hear many platitudes from Government Members, praising the work of our public sector workers, but that pat on the back does not put food on the table, keep a family sheltered or give dignity to workers.

[Patricia Gibson]

The hon. Gentleman is correct that we often hear platitudes and warm words from the Government about how valued the public sector is; a number of people have alluded to that fact. Is he, like me, deeply bewildered and alarmed at the fact that today we hear not even platitudes—nothing but silence?

[Bambos Charalambous]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right; the silence is deafening.

[Danielle Rowley (Midlothian) (Lab)]

With more and more children falling into poverty, many of them in working households, does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to think now and address work inequality and income inequality, and that scrapping the public sector pay cap would be a great place to start?

[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I agree 100% with what she has said: ending the pay cap would be a good start to addressing inequality.

Decent pay for a hard day’s work is an easy concept to grasp, but it does not fit with the Government’s view that austerity and stripping the state to the bone are the only way to ensure that privatisation happens hard and fast. Just over a week ago, the Chancellor had a big opportunity to ensure that public sector workers got the pay they richly deserved, but once again the Government showed their true colours and would only consider increasing pay for nurses, and nurses only, if it was linked to negotiation on their terms and conditions. It is shameful that the Government expect people to negotiate away their terms and conditions in order to get the pay rise they deserve.

The Government must put an end to the public sector pay cap with a fully funded real-terms pay rise for all those working in our public services. As my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith) eloquently put it, we cannot afford not to lift the pay cap. Public sector pay increases generate tax revenues, reduce social security expenditure, inject extra value into the economy and create jobs. Unison research suggests that every 1% increase in public sector pay generates between £710 million and £820 million in increased income tax, national insurance and tax receipts, and means reduced spending on benefits and tax credits. It also adds between £470 million and £880 million to the economy and creates between 10,000 and 18,000 jobs. The Government need to scrap the cap, and do it now.