It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie), who speaks with expertise and passion about healthcare in her constituency. It is a privilege, too, to speak to Lords amendment 1, which would require an independent assessment of the impact of ending free movement on the social care sector.
It was not so long ago that everyone in this House hailed our key workers as heroes and we stood on our doorsteps and clapped for our carers. It is care workers, cleaners, cooks and delivery drivers who keep this country running, but they are also the people this Bill would keep out of the country. One in five health and social care workers was born outside the UK. When I was a care worker, I worked alongside talented and dedicated carers from Zambia, Spain, Italy; we worked long hours to look after elderly people, yet the Government have the cheek to call them low skilled and to say that they do not belong here.
When I went back to work during the pandemic, I had to retrain. My day would look like this: getting up at five; making notes during handover; administering medication; dealing with someone who had had a fall; hoisting someone twice my size, and being alert at all times to small changes that might indicate a serious medical problem. I would try my best to brighten someone’s day and make them feel valued, knowing that I would probably be the only person they saw that day, all while meticulously recording everything that happened on every call.
Our key workers are not low skilled; they are underpaid. They should be rewarded with a pay rise, not threatened with deportation. The purpose of the Bill is to close our borders with Europe. Those who make over £25,600 a year will be allowed in, and those who are paid less will be kept out. That is what a points-based system looks like. It is free movement for those who can afford it and a hostile environment for everyone else.
This Bill will not solve the problems my community faces. It is not foreigners taking away jobs; it is this Government refusing to extend the furlough scheme. It is not migrants running the NHS into the ground; they are keeping it going. If the Minister is so committed to increasing wages, I urge him to listen to the Migration Advisory Committee and increase the wages of care workers to at least £10 an hour. Whether you are a retired miner from Mansfield, a Deliveroo rider in Nottingham or a Bulgarian mum who cleans this very building, we have more in common with one another than we ever will with those who try to divide us. We all want to protect our families. We all want to contribute to our communities. We all know what it is like to have no power, and we all know that it is Ministers who are making people powerless.
We have an enormous privilege as Members of this House, but being paid £80k a year does not make our lives worth any more than those of people being paid £8.72 an hour. We have a responsibility to vote for these amendments and to treat people—our neighbours, our friends, our co-workers—who were born on a different soil in the way that we would want to be treated ourselves and the way that we would want our families to be treated.