Public Sector Pay
Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and Helen Jones(6 years, 11 months ago)
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Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petition 200032 relating to public sector pay.
It is a great pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson.
When Conservative Members talk about public sector workers, it is common to hear them refer to them as if they were somehow a drain on the economy. They try to make a distinction between public sector workers and taxpayers, as if somehow to be fair to one is unfair to the other. That is nonsense, for two reasons. First, public sector workers, like most of us—or at least those of us who cannot afford obscure offshore tax avoidance schemes—are taxpayers and, secondly, in a modern economy the private sector and the public sector are interdependent. It is not possible to run a 21st-century economy without a healthy, educated workforce. The security that is provided by our armed forces, the police and the fire service is as essential to businesses as to individuals, and the rule of law they maintain, along with the courts and the Prison Service, provides the essential stability that allows businesses to grow and invest.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the speech she has started to make. Does she agree that one of the great betrayals and causes of instability is the constant promise that the pay cap is temporary, when all the time it has continued, and seven years down the line here we are?
Helen Jones
My hon. Friend is right, and I will come to that issue later.
None of us could function day to day without, for instance, the people who sweep our streets and empty our bins. I mention them because their hard and unglamorous jobs—as many public sector jobs still are—often get overlooked when we talk about the public sector. We understandably see documentaries about hospitals and schools, but I would like to mention those people who are now officially refuse disposal operatives, but in my neck of the woods are the binnies. They do a grand job.