Health Secretary Wes Streeting says he will no longer accept a social care system ‘built on poverty pay and zero hours contracts’
Social care workers across England will get a pay rise from 2028 in a win for the Mirror ’s Fair Care for All campaign.
A historic Fair Pay Agreement will be applied for the 1.6 million people who work in the struggling sector to help improve standards for our elderly. Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced at Labour Party Conference the creation of a new body of trade unions and employers to negotiate better pay as well as an initial extra £500 million in funding.
Mr Streeting told the conference in Liverpool: “We will no longer accept a system built on poverty, pay and zero hour insecurity.
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“We will back the first ever fair pay agreement for care workers, not just in law, but in practice, starting with half a billion pounds to deliver better pay terms and conditions for care workers across our country, because the people who care for our loved ones should never have to struggle to care for their own.”
He added: “So long as I hold this office, it will be the mission of this Labour government to build a national care service worthy of the name.”
The Mirror has launched the Fair Care for All campaign calling for social care to be properly staffed and funded. The Government has promised to establish a new “National Care Service” but this has been delayed pending a national review. It comes after successive governments ditched or delayed plans to reform the thorny issue of how to fund social care.
Both employers and trade unions will sit on the new body which will give recommendations for both private and public sector workers. However some groups have said £500 million is not enough to significantly improve wages.
The Government has announced care workers will be given a universal career structure of training and qualifications, so working in care “is seen as a profession, not just a job”. It will provide unions with a framework to negotiate better pay and conditions collectively which would be applied across different private care home firms.
The Fair Pay Agreement will be backed by law currently progressing in Parliament in the form of the Employment Rights Bill.
Will Dalton, national officer at the GMB union, said: “If we get it right, Fair Pay Agreements are a potentially seismic change in the care sector. For too long these workers, who play a fundamental role in our society, have suffered poor pay, terms and conditions. FPAs will enable us to negotiate and actually pay carers a living wage, while developing the industry into one safer, more respected and better valued.”
Social care workers earn on average around £12 to £13 an hour with many falling below the Real Living Wage of £12.60.
The Mirror’s Fair Care for All campaign demands include a fair deal for care workers and for all to be paid the Real Living Wage. Labour has already pledged to meet our other demands for the establishment of a National Care Service and has increased the allowance paid to unpaid carers.
In recent decades low public funding for the social care sector has increased wage pressure on private firms which own and run care homes. There are currently 131,000 staff vacancies in adult social care in England with 8% of posts unfilled.
Unison, which is the biggest NHS trade union, welcomed the £500 million extra funding as “a start” but said “substantially more will be needed to deliver the national care service the public deserves”.
General secretary Christina McAnea said: “Ministers will have to increase the funding behind the fair pay agreement at the earliest opportunity. Then wages in care can rise more quickly and the staffing crisis end.”
Mr Streeting responded: “Of course, the trade unions will always say that we need more money for our members, and so they should, because that’s their job. But it’s a bit like when the minimum wage came in, people said, ‘Oh, come on, it should be higher than this’. Where are we today? The minimum wage is so much higher.
“So yes, fair pay agreements and this investment is just the start, but remember, it is a start, and there’ll be more to come over the coming years.”
The Health Foundation think tank said the funding could amount to approximately 20p extra an hour on average.
Lucinda Allen, policy fellow at the Health Foundation, said: “Fair pay agreements have the potential to be transformative but ambition must be matched by investment. Today’s announcement of £500 million funding for the first Fair Pay Agreement in social care in England will not be enough to provide a meaningful boost in staff pay. Shared evenly between the 1.5 million workers in the sector, for example, it could amount to roughly 20p extra per hour each.
“Our analysis suggests £2.3 billion would be required in 2028/29 to increase pay to the level of clinical support workers and administrative workers in the NHS.”
Care England, which represents many private providers of adult social care, suggested the funding would equate to even less, at just 15p extra per hour.
The Mirror reported last month that more working age people are having to quit work to care for a loved one. Analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation showed full-time unpaid carers in England have increased from 1.1 million in 2003/04 to 1.9 million in 2023/24. At the same time applications for formal social care support for our aging population went up by 15% but this has only been met with a 2.5% increase in those receiving it.
Mr Streeting said: “When the NHS was founded the average working person lived to just 65. They retired and they died shortly after. But today, many of us can now look forward to something our grandparents only ever dreamed of – a life after work.” He added: “If we want to match longer lives with better lives then we must build a social care system to meet their needs.”
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After Labour won power last year it launched the Casey Review of adult social care to tackle the thorny issue of how the country should pay to care for its elderly. The first phase is expected to be complete by 2026 and will focus on changes that can be made over the medium term within existing resources. The second phase will report by 2028 and will consider “the long-term transformation of adult social care”.
The Government has been criticised for delaying fundamental reform of social care until the next Parliament. Delivering the review’s recommendations may be dependent on Labour winning a second term in power.
Mr Streeting took aim at Reform UK, saying its leader Nigel Farage was a “snake oil salesman” who wanted to create an insurance-based health system. He said Labour founders of the NHS had created a national health service to “provide the people of our country with the care they need, not just the care they can afford”.
He added: “Our country is being confronted with choices about who we are and what we stand for, and nowhere do those choices come together more starkly than our National Health Service.
“The founding principles of the NHS are now contested for the first time in generations. Farage wants to replace the NHS with an insurance system. His vision for healthcare is a system that checks your pockets before your pulse and asks for your credit card before your care.”