Dear Mr Collins,
I am writing to you as a response to the vote on the
Labour amendment to the Queen’s speech which was voted down this past week.
I am aware that I may not have the same views as you on
several matters, and public sector pay increases may be one of them. I
therefore appreciate that when votes such as this come up in the House of
Commons, they might not result in the outcome that I would desire.
However, I find the reaction of several Conservatives
when the result of the vote was announced to be unacceptable. Were you one of
the MPs who cheered the outcome of the vote? Do you think it is appropriate for
your colleagues to do so?
What the MPs were cheering was a vote to deny a pay
increase to some of the most important people in our society. Doctors, nurses,
firemen, policemen – those who care for our health and our safety – are among
those being denied increases. I fear that if their salaries continue to decline
in real terms, that we will struggle to find people to fill these vital
professions.
I can understand that the Conservative party has
different views on the issue to myself, but literally cheering when you are
denying these people a pay rise seems cruel and heartless.
I have calculated how an unqualified nurse’s pay would
have changed since 2010, when the policy of austerity was first introduced. At
that point, NHS say the nurse’s salary would have been £17,000. Since that
time, they would have had a pay increase of 1% every year from 2012, meaning
their salary would now be £18,046, a cumulative increase of 6.2%.
Inflation in the years from 2010 to 2017 (with an average
figure used for the months of 2017 to date) has been 3.3%, 4.5%, 2.8%, 2.6%,
1.5%, 0.0%, 0.7% and 2.4%. Had the nurse’s salary kept up with inflation, it
would be £20,258 now, so the nurse would be £2,212 or 12.3% worse off in real
terms. This shortfall is, I imagine, the reason why we have been hearing
stories of nurses having to use food banks.
As a comparison, MPs salaries in 2010 – when you were
first elected – was £65,738. It is soon to rise to £76,011. This is a
cumulative increase of 15.6%, significantly higher than the nurse’s 6.2%.
To apply inflation to MPs salaries, you would now be at
£78,337 – a difference of £2,326. So in absolute terms, the shortfall against
inflation is only slightly different to that of the nurse but in relative
terms, it is only 3.1% behind inflation, compared to the nurse’s salary which
is 12.3% behind inflation.
I am aware that independent bodies advise on these
increases and so it is largely outside of your control. The power to award
public pay increases is within the control of parliament. When your government continues
denying those in the public sector an increase and making them fall significantly
behind inflation is in my opinion cruel in its own right, but when those voting
for it are being rewarded much closer to inflation and earning substantially
more than the median wage, it becomes ethically questionable.
I was hoping you could explain to me why you voted
against this amendment to allow my partner as well as several of my friends in
your constituency a pay increase, whether you think it is appropriate for
elected representatives to cheer when denying pay increases to their
constituents, and whether you think it is morally defensible for MPs to continue
to deny them the proposed increase when your own salaries are increasing at a
higher rate.
Yours sincerely,
Stewart Cork
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