Parliament may have been in recess for the last few weeks, my and my team have been working from home but that doesn’t mean we’ve not been doing anything. In fact we’ve been busier than usual with the sheer amount of casework that has been generated due to Covid-19.
One of the most concerning developments has been that a number of constituents are stuck abroad and the Foreign Office seems to have been complacent in it’s approach to providing repatriation flights and doing their utmost to get Brits stuck abroad back home to Oldham.
I’ve been in constant communication with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office over the last few weeks raising the cases of constituents stuck in Australia, Bali, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, it’s been a real challenge to get some accurate information out of the Foreign Office about what help is available for Brits stranded abroad.
For the last few weeks my office has had emails from constituents stuck all over the world, I can only imagine how distressing and unsettling it must be to feel trapped in the midst of a global pandemic. There’s been cases of families stuck with young children who are genuinely terrified about this situation, we’ve had backpackers having to cancel entire legs of their trips and we’ve had people who have almost run out of money in trying to get home.
We’ve seen some progress and we’ve had confirmation that people are now starting to be returned home, and I’m really grateful for the help that the Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham’s office have offered in this regard.
They’ve been committed throughout to making sure that Greater Mancunians, especially families with young kids, get home as soon as possible. The Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Office need to be more proactive in ensuring they are doing their bit and chartering flights to bring these people home as soon as possible ⤵️
It’s really important that employers act responsibly and keep their workers and their families safe at the moment.
The video below is my reponse to this story that aired on Granada Reports tonight, for every brave worker like Joe who speaks out there are ten more who are experiencing the same worries.
Over the last few weeks I’ve had hundreds of people working in warehouses come to me concerned about still having to go to work in potentially unsafe conditions. Since then we have recieved assurances from the relevant employers that they are putting in place (or already have in some cases) measures to keep their workforce safe and healthy.
If you’re a constituent and that’s not your experience please let me know (jim.mcmahon.mp@parliament.uk) and we’ll work to make sure the right thing is done.
You may have seen the news already, but I’m both delighted and humbled to join the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Transport and thankful to Keir for the opportunity.
Transport is critical to our economy and society, for both to succeed we must plan well in advance. As much as the big-ticket schemes are important, we must not lose sight of the day to day concerns of millions; the quality of their local public transport services. I look forward to supporting important key infrastructure projects which place us well in the long term, but also to consider how every village, town and city is served too.
This is an exciting time to serve our movement, I can’t wait to get started with Labour’s transport team and build upon the work of my predecessor Andy McDonald.
I’ve loved my time as a Shadow Minister for Local Government, and I’d like to thank all those I worked with in the Shadow Communities and Local Government team for their fantastic work, especially my former bosses Andrew Gwynne and Teresa Pearce.
In other exciting news, I’m really pleased to be joining the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee as one of three Shadow Cabinet appointments, alongside Jo Stevens and Jonathan Reynolds. It’s already bringing back memories from my days as a Councillor sitting on the NEC.
We are in uncharted territory with COVID-19, our daily lives are changed and many of us will know people in our family, our friends and in the wider community who have been affected, either because they are isolating themselves because they‘ve had the virus themselves or even for some people that they didn’t make it and that very difficult circumstance where you’re not able to be by the side of a loved one as they pass away and even more that you’re not able to attend the funeral in the way that we are used to.
That means it’s really taking its toll on emotional energy collectively, but we’ve also seen the best of our community when we pull together. You know we have seen the very best of our public services whether it’s the NHS, whether it’s the social care workers, whether it’s frontline workers in neighbourhood services, just making sure the bins are emptied.
You know those are things that we take for granted, actually in times like this are a real feat to pull together. Our food workers working to make sure that the supermarkets can stay open and the drivers who make sure that the goods can get to stores but also right through that supply chain people in food manufacturing, people in the field picking the food, these are all really important cogs in the wheel to make sure that our country can continue to function.
But we know because things are changing on a daily basis those stresses and strains are significant for many people. I just want you to know that if you’re not clear where to go for support if you’re confused by some of the advice has been offered particular if you’re in financial hardship or if you have loved ones who are stuck abroad and not able to get home, or if you have a business and you’re really worried about the future and a range of other issues too.
If you’re not sure where to go, then you need to know that my office is here to support you, we’re still providing telephone advice surgeries and now we’ve moved on to video advice surgeries too to make sure you get support when you need it. You can get support by emailing my office at: jim.mcmahon.mp@parliament.uk
You can also check out my website jimmcmahon.co.uk, where you can find very useful links about where to go for formal advice and guidance too. These difficult times, we’re all pulling together to try and work through it and get through the other side together.
Stay safe everyone, these are testing times, but I know that we will see the very best of our country through it.
Last Saturday I wrote a twitter thread on social care workers, but I still had more to say, so I wrote an article that was then published in Politics Home here.
Our nation is feeling the pressure of the COVID-19 outbreak, and as the country braces itself for the coming weeks and months, we will see the very best of people as we mount our collective response. But most important of all for me is the recognition and acknowledgement that Social Care Workers are finally getting, by the public at least.
For too long the work they have done has been either taken for granted or ignored completely and it has been our local government heroes who have been trying to keep it going as budgets plummet and demand rockets.
They are going to need massive investment to deal with this crisis on top of a decade of chronic underfunding that they have already suffered and its urgent they are treated with the respect they deserve from government as vital protective equipment such as masks, aprons, gloves and sanitizer are distributed, but also as testing is rolled out from its woefully low levels.
But we cannot allow this new acknowledgement to be little more than warm words. Nor can we allow the funding crisis in local government to continue after we are through this crisis. For too long government has ignored the building crisis and deferred the financial burden to councils. Not only have they lost 60p in every £1 since 2010, the demand for adult social care and children’s services has increased significantly. The response has been to add that pressure on hard-pressed council taxpayers.
This isn’t anywhere near enough to deal with the cost of rising demand, but it doubles down on an already hugely regressive tax system. Council tax has its place, but it also has its limitations, especially as it now takes 8% of the income of lower earning households, compared to 1% for the highest earners. And it will get worse as the most recent budget expects and additional £8bn to be raised from the tax, meaning more inflation busting increases were being planned for.
Our social care system needs a radical overhaul from top to bottom. To start with we don’t pay social care workers fairly, nor do we reward experience and service; according to the Kings Fund the average rate is £8.10 an hour, and almost no acknowledgement of service is seen with the pay difference between those with 1 years’ experience and 20 years’ experience is just 15p an hour.
We have seen recently with the debate over the government’s plan for a points-based immigration system the strength of feeling in the wider community that low pay does not equal low skill. Many care workers are doing jobs the rest of us could not and would not do, so they should be paid in recognition of the vital service that they provide.
On top of the pay pressures, 24% of jobs in the social care sector are on zero-hours contracts, when you look at the domiciliary care workforce 43% of those were on zero-hours contracts. And on top of the unstable nature of zero-hours contracts, there’s a massive 30% staff turnover as well.
This is reflected throughout the sector; it means that there are 122,000 social care vacancies in England. Which translates to those working in the sector, a huge chunk of them on zero-hours contracts, picking up the strain and being under massive pressure daily. It’s no wonder that staff turnover is at 30% in these conditions, it’s impressive that it isn’t higher!
The entire situation is hampered by the fact that it starts at the very beginning, apprenticeship rates for the social care sector are in the lowest possible band, at £3,000 a year. Only 3 apprenticeship roles listed received less, whereas 511 job roles attracted more.
There’s a huge hole in terms of funding that affects every single one of those points above, since 2010/11 there has been a real terms cut in social care funding of £500m, and according to the Local Government Association we still face a £4billion hole in social care funding.
These aren’t just numbers, they have real implications for those who need it most. The cuts to funding have meant that right now Age Concern assess that there are 1.4million older people currently not getting the care that they need. This isn’t right. This can’t be allowed to continue.
If we value the work that social care workers do, as I know we collectively do, then we as a collective should be prepared to pay for it. Give social care workers better pay, better terms and conditions, and real career progression, and let’s make sure that everyone gets the care they need in old age.
Councils and social care providers won’t be able to hold back the tide for much longer without proper investment. Once this current crisis is over, we must settle the long-term funding of social care and give local government genuinely fair funding to reward those we now rightly see as public sector heroes.
Last week I wrote to the Secretary of State at the Department for Culture Media and Sport highlighting that lots of local newspapers across the country are reliant on advertising for funding.
The Governments steps to help business over the last few weeks have been really welcome, but in the cases of some organisations – like local newspapers – furloughing journalists may mean that all news output stops from that newspaper.
I hope this is something government have considered, and I’d like to encourage those advertisers that can afford it to continue backing their local papers.
We need trusted news sources to combat disinformation now more than ever, it is absolutely essential that local media continues to remain viable and operational to hold us all to account.
Yesterday the national newspapers came together and published an open letter to all advertisers, asking them to #BackDontBlock, and I really hope advertisers take heed of this campaign and extend it to local media too.
I hope the government has been preparing for this and that it doesn’t allow important local institutions to go under. I look forward to hearing from the Secretary of State soon.
I’ve been encouraging people to stay at home and save the NHS and lives as the Covid-19 virus spreads wider. And we are leading by example in my constituency office by introducing remote working for our team.
But doesn’t mean the pressure to support local people has lessened, the opposite is true as local people need more help, support and guidance than ever before. But we also know that not all issues can be dealt with by email and so we will use ‘Zoom’ to hold video surgeries with constituents.
We were really conscious about coming up with a way to keep holding these crucial advice surgeries with constituents, just because the office is closed and staff are working from home, we’ve not stopped working hard for the people of Oldham West and Royton.
We’ve been using video conferencing for meetings over the past week, it’s helped me stay in touch with my office and to carry on doing my job as an MP remotely. So, there’s no reason why we can’t make use of to keep seeing constituents.
We’re still here to help those who need us during this unprecedented time even if we can’t physically meet. Let’s all do our bit, we’re going to be able to give advice to constituents whilst we stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives.
Clearly not everyone can work from home and so we are pushing government hard to offer more help for the self-employed, be clearer about the advice for employees in non-key worker roles, and for agency staff. We are also calling on all businesses in Chadderton, Oldham and Royton to put their work force first and make sure no one is forced to work in condition which breach the advice offered by government.
There are so many ways that you can help out at the moment, volunteering doesn’t just mean being on the front line. There are four different ways that we can do our bit to help our NHS at this time through volunteering.”
You can be a Community Response Volunteer and collect and deliver essential supplies and medications for those who are self-isolating, a Patient Transport Volunteer and take those who are well enough to go home to ensure they settle safely, an NHS Transport Volunteer where you could be moving equipment, supplies or medication between NHS services and sites, or you can become a Check-in and Chat volunteer where you’d provide telephone support to those who are at risk of loneliness because they’re self-isolating.
Coupled with following all the advice and guidance volunteering like this is a great way to reduce the strain on our NHS so that they can do their bit, so let’s come together in the spirit of co-operation.
We can’t forget our mental health at a time like this and even just being there on the phone to talk to someone and make sure they’re doing alright at this difficult time could have a massive impact on both of you.
This volunteering scheme is open to over 18’s as long as they’re fit, healthy and showing no symptoms of COVID-19, and the NHS is making sure that your safety isn’t compromised because the majority of these tasks can be done whilst following social distancing guidance.
You can sign up to volunteer at www.goodsamapp.org/nhs, and don’t forget to follow the advice from the NHS: stay home, protect the NHS, and save lives.
Jim McMahon OBE MP 