Public Sector Pay
Debate between Dan Carden and Luke Graham(7 years ago)
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Dan Carden
Having seen that at first hand, I could not agree more. It is worth noting that the Prison Officers Association is lobbying Parliament tomorrow; I hope many colleagues can get along to that.
I must touch on Aintree Hospital, which is also in my constituency. Nurses there have faced a 14% pay cut since 2010, and one in four are taking jobs outside their employment as nurses to make ends meet and to pay the bills. The effect of the pay cap on our hospitals is to cost us more, as hospitals are having to recruit nurses through agencies at a much higher rate than if they were recruited through the hospital itself. The economics of this fall apart as soon as we put them under any scrutiny.
Some 70% of the public—or more, I believe—support the calling of the debate, and the reasons for that are clear. We have seen the worst squeeze in living standards for generations, the worst wage growth since the steam engine was created and the worst decade for productivity since the Napoleonic war. The damning statistics on wages and productivity point us towards the truth: we cannot cut our way to productivity and we cannot reduce workers’ rights and pay to increase productivity. We need to respect workers, give them decent standards of living and actually create decent places of work. We can do that, first and foremost, in our public sector.
Since the 1970s, the percentage of GDP taken as profits and not paid as wages has risen through the roof; the paradise papers showed examples of profits being extracted from our economy and the money vanishing. When we talk about what money we have to share around for our constituents—in their pay and in benefits—we are talking about a smaller and smaller amount every year.
I remind the House of where the Government started back in 2010. This is not a new problem, and the Government were warned about where we would get to. It was this Government who talked about strivers versus skivers. It was this Government who sought to pit public sector workers against private sector workers, telling them that they were against each other in the race for decent wages and decent living standards. It was this Government who sought to pit unionised workers against non-unionised workers.
We are getting towards the end of the race to the bottom that the Government have started us on.
Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Dan Carden
No, I will not. We are starting to realise that the race to the bottom is one that we all stand to lose. The sooner Government Members realise that, the better off our and their constituents will be.