Fair pay for social care staff will help fix crumbling NHS says Angela Rayner

The Deputy Labour Leader said she was “frustrated” by how the care system has been allowed to fragment under the Tories

A fair pay deal for care staff will help fix Britain’s creaking NHS, Angela Rayner says – adding she’s personally “frustrated” that the UK’s care system has been allowed to “fragment”.

The Deputy Prime Minister told the Sunday Mirror proposals for a fair pay deal for care staff were the “jewel in the crown” of the Employment Rights Bill.

She spoke to this newspaper during a visit to IKEA in Warrington – the Swedish flat-pack giant has been a trailblazer, committing to a living wage for all employees and championing workers rights.

There were a staggering 130,000 vacancies in care in the UK last year – with one in four workers leaving the profession in 2023/24.

Labour has proposed a ‘Fair Pay Agreement’ for care workers in the Employment Rights Bill currently passing through Parliament.

It would mean a million care workers and unions would be able to come together to negotiate better industry-wide pay, terms and conditions.

Ms Rayner said Labour’s plan would help to fill the vacancies – allowing people with complex needs to be cared for in their own homes at a fraction of the cost of hospital stays.

“People can work in IKEA for a lot more than they do for giving personal care to people in their own homes,” she said.

“That’s created a crisis in our NHS because we’ve got an aging population with more complex care needs, and we don’t have the care workers in the community.”

IKEA is the largest accredited Living Wage Foundation retailer – pledging to pay employees at least the “Real Living Wage” of £13.15 an hour in London and £12 an hour in the rest of the UK.

The median hourly rate for adult social care workers in the UK was £11 an hour in December 2023 – just 58p above the minimum wage, which at the time was £10.42 per hour.

At the time, 19% of workers were on the “wage floor” of the minimum wage – with 60% paid less than the 2024 increase of the minimum wage to £11.44.

She went on: “The frustration for me is that people haven’t grasped that. I don’t know if that’s because it’s a predominantly female sector, that was considered manual work before.

“But if we just have that leap, to look at where the evidence is and work with the care sector and those that want to provide the care services in the communities, we could deliver a transformation for our elder population that deserve better care – but also save the taxpayers huge sums of money.”

Ms Rayner said more than 3 million workers are already benefiting from changes to the commission that recommends increases to the national living wage – which will have to take the cost of living into account when setting the rate.

“We’re in IKEA and places like IKEA will benefit because they’ve been delivering a real living wage for some time,” she said.

“Now people that come into their stores are going to have more money in their pocket.”

Ms Rayner took a tour of the furniture megastore, speaking to shop floor staff and meeting with apprentices – before admitting she’d never tried either the chain’s famous meatballs or Daim cake.

“All I’ve had is the ginger biscuits, you know, just to keep my ginger up,” she said – but after our chat, a member of staff arrived with a tray of Daim cake for her and her team to try.

We spoke at the end of a challenging week for No10 – which on Wednesday was besieged by a Barbour-clad army of angry farmers, furious at Labour’s plan to close inheritance tax loopholes for the richest landowners.

“The previous government gave 25 separate tax rises to people in the UK, highest tax burden on record,” she said. “You can’t pull that lever [again] and the Chancellor understands that.

“Yes, we’ve made some difficult choices around inheritance tax but protecting most farmers within that. But we’ve said that to do that we’ve been able to invest in our public services and it’s the right decision to make.”

As a former care worker, Ms Rayner said the proposed changes to social care pay and conditions are “very personal to me”.

“Adult social care for is always talked about as if it’s a burden. A cost pressure,” she said.

“But I know it doesn’t have to be a cost pressure because I’ve seen it in action when we’ve invested in the workforce.

“The previous Labour government did that. We had minimum standards in care. all of that as fragmented now.”

Some care sector employers have complained it will increase costs for local councils – but Ms Rayner insists the project is a “win-win”.

“If we have this fair pay agreement that it’s proposed as part of our employment rights bill, alongside the minimum wage, we can deliver complex care packages in people’s own homes at a fraction of the cost of what we’re paying at the moment for people to be kept in hospital when they don’t need to be.

“And actually the more that people are in hospital, the more time it takes for them to be rehabilitated and to get well again, especially if you’re of the older population.

“So it’s actually better care for people and it costs the taxpayer so much less and care workers get a pay rise and a career structure. There’s there’s no losing in this.”

She added: “It costs so much more money to keep somebody on a trolley or keep somebody in a bed when they can’t get the care at home.

“So if we were just to invest in that care sector, we would save huge sums of money in the NHS. and that’s why the fair pay agreement under the employment rights bill, to me is the jewel in the crown of that bill.

“Because that will deliver a significant amount of the outcomes that we need to deliver proper care services for people in this country”