Leading by Example In a time when politicians are regularly accused of being out of touch with everyday life, Nadia Whittome showed why her constituents in Nottingham East were right to place their trust in her during the last General Election. While no one would have blamed her for stocking up on essentials and hunkering down in safety, Britain’s youngest MP made the decision to put herself on the frontline of COVID-19 by returning to care work, the profession in which she worked prior to her election victory last December. With a unique, firsthand perspective on the devastating impact of the virus on the country’s most vulnerable people, we talked to the Labour MP about the ongoing lack of personal protective equipment, the impact of cuts to health and social care services and the Government’s response to coronavirus… What have your experiences of coronavirus been since returning to care work? It’s really tough on the frontline: residents and staff are very scared because there isn’t enough PPE. As well as that, there are not enough tests being done in Nottingham. They are currently giving 200 tests a day, which is much, much lower than it needs to be. It’s making it hard for care workers to get hold of them or book an appointment. It isn’t the fault of the local NHS, it’s that the Government isn’t prioritising testing enough. Coronavirus has shined a light on the inequalities already present in society and the absolute scandal of low pay. Care workers just aren’t paid enough; they risk their lives for minimum wage, or not much more, and aren’t even being kept safe on the frontline. Lots of key workers will have to rely on statutory sick pay if they need to shield, which means some people will have to be made destitute in order not to work and to keep other people safe. A lot of key workers don’t even have statutory sick pay because they have zero-hour contracts. So people are basically being forced to choose between risking getting the virus, or risking becoming destitute? Yes, exactly. I think that is very stark in Nottingham where, not very long ago, a man named Errol Graham starved to death on Universal Credit. I think it’s on people’s minds that some are having to choose between one thing that might kill them and another thing that might kill them. There have been countless images in the media of frontline workers being forced to use homemade PPE that isn’t fit for purpose. Have you got sufficient safety equipment in the care home you’re working in? We’ve got masks, but they’re surgical masks, which are not the right type, and we can only use one of those a day. That means they have to last us between 5-15 hours, depending on how long we are on a shift for. And we’ve got visors, but they’re homemade – a member of the public donated them. We’ve also got plastic aprons and gloves, which on their own don’t amount to adequate PPE.
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The Public Health England guidance is not particularly clear, and it’s also below the standard of the World Health Organisation guidance which is what we should be following. It’s ridiculous. This virus is the same everywhere and WHO have set out minimum guidelines for PPE, so I don’t understand why we’ve decided that people in the UK should have less protection. I know that the management where I work [in the care home] have been trying really hard to source more PPE, so it isn’t a criticism of them either – it’s the fact that the Government hasn’t prioritised it. There is a global shortage, but that’s only part of the problem. The Government should have invested in stockpiling PPE, that’s what other countries have done. In 2016 the Government did the run-through to see whether we would be adequately prepared if we had a pandemic and the answer was ‘No’. Instead of implementing changes as a result of that, they just joked, ‘Well, I hope that we don’t have a pandemic.’ Now we do and we’re not prepared.
Care workers just aren’t paid enough; they risk their lives for minimum wage, or not much more, and aren’t even being kept safe on the frontline What was behind your own decision to return to care work? I wanted to support my colleagues because I knew that they are under massively increased strain as a result of COVID-19. I knew they were already under pressure because social care has been in crisis for a very long time – we’ve had £7.7 billion cut from the sector in the last decade and people who bear the burden of those cuts are care workers, who are always low-paid and predominantly women.
In care work, the jobs being done and the people receiving care often depend on care workers going the extra mile. I knew that, as a result of COVID-19, they would have to go several extra miles. The Government might have cut spending for social care, but the people in need haven’t disappeared. You’re obviously exposing yourself to the risk of getting ill by returning to care work. Has that had an impact on your personal life? I live with my mum and she's in the extremely vulnerable category, like many of my colleagues’ family members are. We’ve all been really careful by wiping down the surfaces in our house and changing our clothes immediately. It's exhausting being a full-time MP and a part-time care worker because both jobs are strenuous in themselves, but I also feel very happy to be working with my colleagues and friends [in the care home] again. This is a very isolating time for everybody and I’m fortunate to be with friends and family. What are your thoughts on the Government response so far? They were slow to lock down, slow to order PPE and slow to test, which has resulted in Britain’s death toll being disproportionately high in comparison with the global death toll. That is not political point-scoring; I wouldn’t be doing my job as a Labour MP or as a careworker if I didn’t raise that issue and demand better from the Government. It’s not about scoring points, it’s about wanting to save lives and stop avoidable deaths. The lockdown has to continue and I’ll be resisting any calls for lockdown to be lifted prematurely. There are things that Matt Hancock [Secretary of State for Health and Social Care] could and should be doing. He should be mobilising UK manufacturers to produce PPE – the fact that we don’t have enough is a combination of a decade of spending cuts, a total lack of planning and knowing that we were unprepared but still not acting. I know [new Labour leader] Keir Starmer has been contacting UK manufacturers and they want to help, but the Government hasn’t been contacting them.
