Certificate of Common Sponsorship
Debate between Sarah Russell and Rupa Huq(1 week, 3 days ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) for securing this debate.
Two sets of people are being abused and exploited. The first set are workers in the care sector. I agree with everything that my hon. Friend said about the extent of abuse in the sector, and I have seen it myself in my employment law practice. However, I have also always been aware that there was a need for more advice in the sector than we could ever provide, for exactly the reason that he raised: people are too scared to come forward.
The other set of people for whom this situation is deeply unjust are my constituents who receive care, who are spending their life savings on care, and who would be absolutely horrified to discover the circumstances in which many of the people who give that care are living. The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority has talked about this as a massive growth area of concern—I have spoken to the Minister about that previously, in this exact room, so I will not go into precisely the same points again.
The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority could potentially have a licensing scheme for care workers but, bluntly, it licensing schemes in other sectors do not seem to be eliminating abuse, so a certificate of common sponsorship is the way to get better rights and behaviours within the sector.
At the moment, some councils are putting out tenders for care at payment rates of around £17 an hour. Care representative organisations tell me that the actual cost of providing care with staff paid in a legally compliant way is £22 an hour. That does not include any management costs whatsoever; it is just the cost of the member of staff being provided. We have, at minimum, a £5 an hour gap between legally compliant care workers and what local councils are offering, although the gap is more than that because companies will, of course, want to make some degree of profit—that is not, per se, illegitimate—and will naturally need to charge for some management costs. A gap that big is enriching non-compliant employers in the sector. Compliant employers are withdrawing from the market because they cannot manage to compete, or provide services, for the amounts of money available.
There is an urgent need for a wider reform of the care sector, and pay within the sector. We are, of course, all looking forward to sectoral bargaining, to better protect workers and make it clearer to people what their rights are. However, unless workers have the capacity to enforce those rights, and unless they can move between employers as the rest of us can, they will continue to be exploited.
We already have a significant problem in the sector. The problem is getting worse and will continue to get worse but this is, I hope, one of a number of measures that could really improve working conditions for people in this country.
