On 24 April, I joined UNISON Eastern Region in Bury St Edmunds for their day of action in support of migrant care workers. You can read my speech below:
Sisters. Brothers, Friends, thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the work you do every single day, the work this country cannot function without and does not want to admit it cannot function without.
I want to start by reading something. Not because you need me to explain your own lives back to you. You don’t. You know this better than anyone in this room, better than anyone in Westminster, better than anyone in the Home Office. But because the words matter. Because they were said by one of you. And because they should be heard:
“I came to the United Kingdom full of hope, full of determination, ready to dedicate my life to caring for those who are most vulnerable: the elderly, the lonely, those who need comfort and compassion. Every day, I put my heart, my hands, my energy into this work. I soothe pain. I reassure fear. I protect lives. I do this because I care.
And yet despite my sacrifices, despite my dedication, I feel invisible. I am treated as if my commitment does not matter.”
I hear that. We hear that. And I want to say to whoever wrote those words, and to everyone in this room who has ever felt the same way: you are not invisible. Not to us. Not here. Not today.
You are the people who washed someone’s mum. Who sat with someone’s nan. Who held a stranger’s hand in the last hour of their life because nobody else was there. You are the load-bearing walls of this country’s care system. And this country owes you more than it has ever given you.
I want to say something before I go any further, and I want to say it plainly.
I am not here to speak for you. You do not need me to speak for you. You have your own voice, your own union, your own testimony, and it is more powerful than anything I could say.
What I am here for is to stand with you. To be an ally. To use whatever platform I have to amplify what you are already saying. And to be honest with you about what is happening in British politics right now, because you deserve honesty more than anyone.
So let me be honest.
What this government is proposing to do to you is wrong. It is morally wrong. It is politically wrong. And it is practically wrong.
Shabana Mahmood and the Home Office want to triple the qualifying period for Indefinite Leave to Remain for so-called “lower-skilled” workers. Fifteen years. And they want to apply it retrospectively. To people already here. To people who came in good faith, on a promise, under rules this country is now quietly deciding to break.
You were told one thing. Now you are being told another. That is not how you treat workers. That is not how you treat neighbours. That is not how you treat human beings.
And on top of that, they have closed overseas recruitment for social care. Health and care worker visas have collapsed by 88%. There are 111,000 empty posts in the sector, and still this government’s answer is to make life harder for the people already here doing the work.
And the visa sponsorship system. Let’s talk about that. Because everyone in this room knows what it means in practice. It means one employer. One boss. One manager having a bad day. That is all it takes for someone’s life, their family’s life, the life they have built in this country, to be put at risk.
That is not a workers’ rights framework. That is a leash.
And here is what I find hardest to swallow. Because I am a Labour MP, and I have to say this to you honestly.
We were promised, this movement was promised, the British public was promised, a genuine workers’ rights agenda.
An Employment Rights Act. Sectoral bargaining. A Fair Pay Agreement.
But you cannot deliver workers’ rights to some workers and not to others. You cannot stand up in Parliament and talk about dignity at work, and then leave the most vulnerable workers in the country under the thumb of a sponsor who can march them to the airport. For you, for hundreds of thousands of care workers like you, that Employment Rights Act is a mirage. A paper tiger. Rights that exist on the page but not in your workplace. Not in your life.
You cannot build workers’ power on a foundation of fear. And that is what they are asking you to do.
And the sectoral bargaining we were promised? We were promised a genuine transfer of power from bosses to workers, across whole industries. What we have got is sectoral bargaining for one sector only, capped at £500 million. That is twenty pence an hour, if it was spread across every care worker in the country. With the Secretary of State holding a veto at every stage.
And a timetable that says the Negotiating Body does not even start its work until late 2026, and the first Fair Pay Agreement will not put a single extra penny in your pocket until 2028 at the earliest.
It is sectoral bargaining with the teeth pulled out. And in the meantime, you, the people it is meant to protect, are being told to live in fear.
And let us be honest about why this is so hard to fix.
This entire sector, social care, should be in public ownership. It should never have been anything else.
Because for too long, for decades now, this country has allowed the things that matter most, the things none of us can do without, the things every human being needs simply to exist and to live a fulfilled life, to be outsourced, sold off, handed over to the gods of profit maximisation, exploitation and extraction.
That has to end.
There is a privatisation premium in this country. An extra cost that every one of us pays, every month, every bill, every council tax demand, for the madness of running essential services as profit centres. It pushes up the cost of living. It pushes up the cost of doing business. It hollows out the public realm. And it grinds down the people who do the actual work. People like you.
Housing. Energy. Water. Public transport. Health. Education. Nursery care. Adult social care. All of it. Every last bit of it. It should be run for the public. Controlled by the public. Accountable to the public. And in our interests, and our interests alone.
That is not nostalgia. That is not ideology. That is common sense. Every country that has looked at this honestly has come to the same conclusion. We are the outlier. We are the ones still pretending the market knows how to run a care home. It doesn’t. It never has. And the longer we pretend otherwise, the more people like you pay the price.
Now, I know some of you may be wondering what a Labour MP is doing standing in front of you, saying these things, about a Labour government. So let me be clear.
What we have in Westminster right now is not a Labour government in any meaningful sense. It is a political elite that has captured the Labour Party, and by extension this movement, and is governing predominantly in the interests of the wealthy, the corporates and the oligarchs. They are going through the motions. Mouthing the words. Chasing Reform on immigration because they think it will save them at the ballot box. And they are quite willing to sacrifice you to do it.
It will not save them. It never does. You do not beat the far right by borrowing its clothes. You beat it by offering something better. Something that actually improves people’s lives.
And I want to say this directly. I do not accept that this is the best the Labour Party can offer. I do not accept that this is what Labour is. And I will keep saying so, in Parliament and outside it, for as long as it takes.
Now let me say something about the movement you are part of. Because this matters.
Migrant workers have been on the frontline of the British labour movement from the beginning. From the matchgirls to the dockers to Grunwick to the NHS itself. Always on the frontline. Always doing the hardest work. And always, too often, othered. Made to feel like outsiders. Made easier to pick off and abuse.
But here is the truth. You are not outsiders in this movement. You are this movement. UNISON is your union. Your voice. Your power. And what you are doing with this campaign, stepping forward, telling your stories, demanding to be treated as the workers and the human beings you are, is exactly what this movement has always done at its best.
And something else. The politics of othering, the politics of pitting British worker against migrant worker, only works if the people in this room let it work. It depends on people not seeing themselves in you. But the moment anyone recognises that your fear is their fear, your tiredness is their tiredness, your dignity is their dignity, the whole thing falls apart.
Because what they are doing to you, they would do to every worker in this country if they thought they could get away with it. And if they get away with it here, no worker is safe. That is not rhetoric. That is the logic of the thing.
So your fight is everyone’s fight. And everyone’s fight is yours.
So here is what UNISON is demanding. And here is what I am with you on.
No retrospective application of the fifteen-year rule. Full stop. Not negotiable.
A sector-wide visa scheme. Take sponsorship out of the hands of bosses and put it into a publicly owned entity accountable to workers. Because as long as your boss holds your visa, your rights are a fiction.
And proceed with the Fair Pay Agreement urgently, while protecting the immigration status of every international recruit already here.
These are not radical asks. They are the bare minimum. The bare minimum for you to be able to live, work and build a life in this country with dignity and without fear.
I want to finish by saying this.
You came here full of hope. Full of determination. Ready to dedicate your lives to caring for people who needed you.
You have kept that promise. Every single day.
Now it is this country’s turn to keep its promises to you.
And if this government will not, then this movement will. That is what we are for. That is what we have always been for.
You are not alone. You are not invisible. You are seen. You are heard. And we are with you.
Thank you.
