My mother used to say that
you could always tell when a politician was lying because their lips would be
moving. Even as a child that did not always ring true with me, there are good
MPs, people who care and who want to change things for the better… Now I am not
so sure, well certainly not about the MPs in our governing party.
This government has capped
public sector pay rises at 1% since 2010, it began with a two year pay freeze
(1). This was part of their policy to reduce our country’s deficit, what has
become known as austerity, not an unfair name. But this policy, the pay cap,
has hit NHS staff hard. By 2014, only four years into this policy, NHS staff’s
pay had risen only half as much as the rate of inflation, 2010 to 2014
inflation rose by 12% where NHS staff’s pay only rose by 6% (2). Since 2010
nurses’ pay has fallen, in real terms, by 14% (3). This pay cap is not only
unpopular, it has also had a severe effect on the nursing workforce. 10% of NHS
nursing posts are vacant (4), and at the beginning of July it was announced
that more nurses were leaving the profession than were joining it (5). The
Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the registration body for nursing,
revealed that in the year to March the number of registered nurses fell by
1,783. The more nurses we lose the more patient care is affected, nurses are
the glue of healthcare.
Now nurses aren’t just
leaving nursing because of our stagnating pay, but it is a huge factor in the
poor working conditions facing us.
After this year’s General
Election (The election no one wanted) many leading Conservative politicians
stepped forward and said the pay cap was unfair. Boris Johnson, the Foreign
Secretary, was reported as supporting the idea of public-sector workers getting
a better pay deal (6). Michael Gove said independent pay review bodies should
make the decision on pay (7). Sir Oliver Letwin supported a limited rise in
taxes to support scrapping the cap (8). Tory MP and former nurse Maria
Caulfield said NHS staff "will vote
with their feet" unless pay is tackled (8). Even Jeremy Hunt hinted at
scrapping nurses’ pay cap (9), he said “I
have a great deal of sympathy for the case that nurses amongst others have made
on the issue of pay.”
With all this support in the
Conservative party it should have been easy to scrap the pay cap, but it seems
that politicians say one thing in front of the media and do another thing in a
parliamentary vote. The Labour Party introduced an amendment to the Government’s
Queen Speech (The Bill were the Government lays out their plans for the next
parliament) to scrap the public sector pay cap (10). The Conservatives, in a
deal with the DUP, defeated this amendment by 323 votes to 309 (11), a very slim
majority. But Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Oliver Letwin all voted against
the amendment. Three Conservatives MPs who were all former nurses voted against
it (12), Anne Milton, Nadine Dorries and Maria Cauldfield, who had previously
spoken out against the cap (8). When they won the vote Conservative MPs cheered
(13), the shear tastelessness of which is breath-taking. They had just voted to
cut our wages in real terms and then they cheered themselves.
The Government has now stated
that the pay cap is here to stay (14), condemning millions of public sector
employees to seeing their pay falling in real terms. In the same period MPs
have not seen their own pay rises capped, in 2015 they received an inflation
busting 10% pay rise (15). Inflation continues to rise but our wages don’t.
Prices continue to rise, rent and mortgages continue to rise, food, fuel and
the internet all continue to rise in price and yet our wages don’t. Soon no one
is going to want to work in the public sector.
At the height of her
campaigning during the General Election, Theresa May appeared on BBC Question
Time. A woman in the audience, a nurse, challenged her over the pay cap. To
justify it, May replied, “There isn’t a
magic money tree that we can shake that suddenly provide for everything that
people want.” (16) But this was a lie.
Faced with a hung parliament,
Theresa May formed a deal with the DUP for their ten votes to support her
Government in their key votes. The price of this deal is £1.5 billion in extra
funding for Northern Ireland (17). This £1.5 billion would fund a pay rise of
3% for all NHS staff. A pay rise of 1% for NHS staff would cost £500 million
(18), therefore a 3% rise would cost £1.5 billion. And this deal with the DUP
isn’t to support the Government in all votes, just key votes. Nice work if you
can get it.
As for Theresa May’s claim
that there’s no “magic money tree” is
a lie. She can quickly find £1.5 billion to prop up her failing Government, a
hung parliament she caused, but she can’t find money to relieve the hardship of
so many public sector workers. And she doesn’t need a “magic money tree”, she can simply raise taxes, she has the power to
do that. 48% of the British population would support rises taxes to ease
austerity, this year’s British Social
Attitudes Survey found (19).
After treatment like this how
can I trust anything this Government does? Whose interests do they have at
heart, not those of the vast majority of the people who make up this country? I
am sickened, my Government is morally bankrupt.
Drew Payne
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