Mike Hill
Main Page: Mike Hill (Labour - Hartlepool)Department Debates - View all Mike Hill's debates with the HM Treasury
(6 years, 11 months ago)
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Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I wish to declare an interest; I used to be employed by Unison, which brought forward the petition and also donated to my general election campaign, together with Unite and GMB.
The Government’s austerity agenda has not only done great damage to our public sector services but brought our NHS to the brink of collapse. Indeed, in Hartlepool, our local hospital is at risk of haemorrhaging services, which is unacceptable to the people. I know from experience that relentless cuts and redundancies have led to remaining staff being over-stretched and under extreme pressure. For more years than I care to remember, those same workers have suffered pay restraints and pay caps. In the light of inflation, that has meant, in effect, that they have suffered a real-terms pay cut. It is a sad indictment of the situation created by this Government that health workers and other public sector workers in my constituency are resorting to food banks.
Things have got so bad that Unison gives out school uniform grants and other welfare provisions for those trapped in in-work poverty, and local branches increasingly issue food bank vouchers to their members who are in need. It is unacceptable that this situation has arisen and that NHS and other public sector workers are struggling to get by on low pay. The pay cap has been cited as one of the reasons why nurses have been leaving the profession in droves, yet its main purpose—addressing Government debt—has failed. Since the cap was introduced, Government debt has grown by around 50%, to reach £1.7 trillion in May this year. Our hard-working NHS staff should not suffer the burden of propping up—
Mr Jim Cunningham
My hon. Friend has probably heard Ministers say how wonderful our public services are and that what staff and our emergency services do is wonderful. But does he agree that the best thing that the Government could do is to improve on the recommendations of the wages board for a big increase—not the one that the Government might be proposing? More importantly, does he agree that that the Government should put their money where their mouth is, and give those staff a decent increase?
Mike Hill
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The Government’s words are hollow when they say that they will look at the pay review bodies but they have not committed to the recommendations of those pay bodies.
Our hard-working NHS staff should not suffer the burden of propping up the Government’s failed and farcical fiscal policy. They deserve a pay rise and they deserve it now.