Public Sector Pay: Proposed Strike Action

Debate between Tony Lloyd and Edward Leigh

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Let me add to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon). Why not make people like me pay national insurance contributions once we have passed the statutory age for retirement? Why not lift the cap on national insurance contributions, which would raise real money for our national health service? That would be a credible way forward. I hope that the Minister has listened intently. It is perhaps unfair that she is nearly on her own, apart from the hon. Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew).

It is true that the internationally recognised right to strike is circumscribed quite badly in this country. However, the real question that Conservative Ministers should address is this: why are so many people, across so many occupations, so angry that they are prepared to take industrial action? We have seen it with Royal Mail, Openreach, the Fire Brigades Union and PCS, and I could go on.

I want to concentrate on a couple of issues. In the end, when people take the opportunity to go on strike, it points to a fundamental malaise in the workplace. They have very few alternatives. One is to look for work elsewhere. That is a real issue when there are around 132,000 vacancies in our national health service, and when a third of teachers are leaving teaching after five years, when they have seen their salaries go down by around 20% since austerity began in 2010. The issue of retention should worry the Government just as much as the summer of solidarity and the woeful winter that we are heading into.

The Government have to get real about this situation. Looking at the national health service, it has been said so many times that it is almost tedious to repeat that we applauded health workers during the pandemic, but now we are saying to health workers across the piece that we do not value their work. It is astonishing that the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives are balloting for industrial action. It is almost beyond belief, and certainly beyond any kind of precedent. The Government should worry about that, because they have broken something that was precious: the commitment of people to their workplace and to those whom they serve, because they now have to look at defending their own families.

It is not that midwives and nurses do not want to be there for the people whom they serve. I have had great experiences with the national health service; I know the dedication that people are prepared to give on a daily basis. We have to ask: what has gone so badly wrong that the Government have forced people into this situation? It is similar with teaching. Healthcare and teaching are two professions that are so fundamental to the quality of our way of life. We can talk about the private sector generating resources, but when someone is ill, they want a nurse, and a child wants a teacher. Those things are so important.

Now that we are in this crisis, the Government have got to look in the mirror and ask themselves what has gone wrong. Of course we can find alternative sources of funding, and we must, because that is the political choice. My challenge to the Minister is not to condemn strikers; I will support those who feel they have to take industrial action. I want them not to strike, but that depends on the Government coming forward and agreeing to make the political choice to not go back into austerity for those people in the public sector. They need to make the political choice to reward them in a way that is adequate. The Minister on her own today may not be able to give us an answer, but I urge her to go back and tell the Prime Minister and the Chancellor that this is what we demand.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that if you wish to speak, it is courteous to be here right from the beginning. I call Claudia Webbe, but just for a couple of minutes—it is not fair on the Opposition spokesman otherwise.