Charlotte Nichols
Main Page: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)Department Debates - View all Charlotte Nichols's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(3 years ago)
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Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie? I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) for raising this important debate.
I am proud to be a member of GMB and Unite, two of the trade unions in the NHS, and have had extensive consultations with constituents in the Royal College of Nursing who are rightly appalled at the 1% offer being floated.
Talk is cheap, but retaining the NHS’s status as the jewel in our national crown is not. Ten years of austerity and real-terms pay cuts for our NHS staff left our NHS on its knees when the pandemic struck. It is a credit to the incredible efforts of our NHS staff, who put their own lives on the line every single day, that we are now at a point where we can talk about what life after covid might look like.
Two nurses in Warrington gave their lives caring for others through this pandemic: Andy Collier, a nurse practitioner at Hollins Park Hospital, and Joselito Habab, a nurse at Warrington Hospital. May their memories forever be a blessing.
Beyond the ultimate sacrifice that they paid, I have spoken to dozens of NHS workers in Warrington about their own sacrifices, including an intensive therapy unit nurse who has been living in a caravan, away from her family home and children. She is terrified about bringing covid home to her family, as she sees the reality of this virus every single day at work. Other NHS workers moved into the Peace Centre to keep their families safe as they cared for the families of others. They are overworked, overwhelmed and yes, underpaid.
NHS staff are among those accessing support from Warrington food bank, and thousands are suffering the mental health effects of their experiences not only in dealing with the pandemic but in trying to make ends meet.
A real-terms NHS pay cut is not only a kick in the teeth for our NHS frontline; it is also economically illiterate. The NHS is the country’s largest employer and putting pay in the pockets of our NHS staff means more money circulating around all of our communities as we recover from this pandemic, as it will be spent in our local shops, local tradespeople, childminders and supporting local economies.
Last year’s claps will not pay this year’s bills, so the Government need to come up with a figure that not only recognises the incredible national contribution that our NHS staff have made during this pandemic, including the thousands of hours of unpaid overtime, but that begins to close the gulf between their pay and inflation over the past 10 years. Anything less is an utter betrayal.