A Plan for the NHS and Social Care

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind) [V]]

The legislative programme outlined in the Queen’s Speech lacks the ambition, depth and understanding needed to address the many health, poverty and social inequalities facing the residents, communities and families of Leicester East.

There is nothing in this legislative programme to save Leicester General Hospital from being downgraded. Our NHS staff and care workers are exhausted and there are nearly 5 million people in the UK waiting for NHS treatment. Rather than investing in our NHS, the proposals actually cut services, including hard-working staff. NHS staff and social care workers deserve much more support than they are currently getting, including a 15% pay rise instead of the insulting 1% real-terms pay cut offered to nurses.

We should all be very worried about the new powers granted to the Health and Social Care Secretary to accelerate the privatisation of our NHS. The Government want more profit and less care. I urge them, rather than downgrading Leicester General Hospital, selling off its land and extending NHS privatisation, to reverse their strategy and properly fund all hospitals in Leicester and across the UK.

On planning, the Government want to give more powers to property speculators and developers while delivering less genuinely affordable housing. The Royal Institute of British Architects has already warned that the Government’s plans could lead to

“the next generation of slum housing”.

On overcrowding, there are pockets of my constituency close to Leicester General Hospital where populations of 2,000 live in areas of 60,000 square meters. Hon. Members may not know what that equates to. It means that each person has an average of 32 square metres of space, which is equivalent to a box bedroom. The UK average is 3,676 square metres of space per person, more than 100 times the space afforded some people living in Leicester East. There is nothing in the Government’s legislative programme to address that stark inequality or to provide the health services that such overcrowded populations need. Rather than making it harder to build homes fit for working families, the Government must properly fund local authorities such as Leicester City Council and rapidly increase the construction of council housing and genuinely affordable family-sized homes.

On jobs and tackling poverty, I was proud to join the picket line in solidarity with workers at SPS Technologies in Barkby Road, in Leicester East, who bravely took strike action, with Unite the union, against their employer’s appalling fire and rehire employment practices. Well, we won. This form of solidarity will now be needed across the country, because the Government have failed to outlaw these exploitative practices.

Endemic wage exploitation in Leicester’s garment industry continues apace, with workers still being paid as little as £3 per hour, while the retail brands make super-profits, profiting with impunity from the exploitative sweatshop labour of workers in Leicester and worldwide. Factories compete to supply at the lowest price possible, and 60% of garments end up in landfill within a year. In addition to strengthening powers of the unions, collective bargaining power and workers’ rights, we need a garment trading adjudicator, similar to the Groceries Code Adjudicator, to ensure that payment terms for suppliers are fair, that wages are paid at a legal rate and that employment is secure. We need a more sustainable and ethical fashion industry and an end to zero-hours contracts and throwaway fashion.

The wellbeing of our entire planet and our health relies on our using the post-pandemic recovery to mitigate the existential threat of climate change with a radical green new deal to rebuild the country in the interests of people and planet.