NHS Pay

Navendu Mishra Excerpts
Wednesday 24th March 2021

(3 years ago)

Westminster Hall
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Navendu Mishra Portrait Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab) [V]
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hosie.

I thank my good friend the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing this debate just days after the Government’s shameful decision to give our NHS heroes a paltry 1% pay rise. My hon. Friend has a long track record of championing workers’ rights during her time as a regional convenor for Unison North West, where she fought for better pay and conditions for all public sector workers.

I also pay tribute to Unison North West, which has done so much for tens of thousands of members across our region, many of whom are NHS staff. Its One Team2k campaign has highlighted the need for every worker in the NHS to be given a £2,000 pay rise and to bring the minimum pay to £10.23 per hour, taking the NHS pay float above the real living wage.

It should come as no surprise that during this debate we have heard repeated criticism of the Government’s decision to award NHS staff a 1% pay rise. After the most challenging year for the NHS since its inception, when staff have been stretched to breaking point to keep our country safe and deliver first-class care, despite a chronically underfunded health service, this is no way to reward them.

The Government should hang their heads in shame. To put all of this in context, a 1% pay rise amounts to just £223 million a year, or 2.23% of the £10 billion set aside for new nuclear warheads, and just 0.22% of the £37 billion for the failed Test and Trace programme. If we combine that with the £30 million that the Health Secretary squandered on covid contracts for his former neighbour, we will see that the decision not to give money to those who deserve it most is quite clearly an ideological one.

One of the many lessons the Government should take away from this pandemic is that their death by a thousand cuts approach to the NHS prior to this crisis left it exposed and struggling to cope. We are far from being out of the woods, and now should be the time for not only investing to deal with the current pandemic, but planning for the future. That means retaining existing NHS staff.

Given how they have been treated by this Government, is it any wonder that research by Unison has found that 52% of NHS workers are considering leaving their position within the next year, with one in 10 considering that option very seriously? That is a staggering statistic, and it is not simply because those staff feel overstretched after an incredibly difficult period; it is because 70% feel worse off than a year ago. That is simply unacceptable. They include staff at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport and Mr David McAllister, who runs the Unison health branch at the hospital. The Government’s policy right across the public sector should be fair pay for fair work.

It is also unacceptable that staff are being expected to do more for less. There are countless stories of healthcare assistants being employed at band 2 while being trained to do band 3 work. The situation is made even worse by the fact that band 2 staff earn less than £10 an hour, which in many parts of this country, particularly London, is a poverty wage. That is often stretched further still, as almost half of the people served by Unison revealed that they were the main breadwinner in their family. I hope that the Minister will listen and that the shameful 1% figure will be revised.