Key workers deserve better than this Tory contempt – Yorkshire Post Letters

It is a national scandal that a third of key workers have had to use food banks during the pandemic.

After everything they’ve done for us, they deserve a pay rise. But what we heard from the Prime Minister and Chancellor at Tory Party Conference last week is far from that.

Key workers kept us going through the darkest days of the pandemic and now they are facing a pay freeze. When the supermarkets needed to be stocked, they were there. When the elderly in our community needed care, they were there. When our hospitals needed to be cleaned, they were there. And yet, key workers still earn eight times less than the national average.

This isn’t just about doing the right thing by our key workers. Analysis published by the TUC shows how the economic recovery can be sped up by reversing cuts to key workers’ pay, making pay rises for other workers more likely too.

Parliamentary constituencies will get an average economic boost of £6.2m if real terms pay cuts since 2010 are reversed.

We need our MPs to listen and take action – we all stand to gain from key workers receiving the pay rise they deserve.

From: Bob Watson, Baildon.

THE Prime Minister has run the country through the dreadful pandemic, has suffered badly from Covid, recently lost his mother, and has a young family.

He is currently enjoying a short, well-earned few days of rest and recuperation on the Costa del Sol, as have many thousands of other UK residents.

Rather pathetic, therefore, to see carping about this break.

From: Peter Rickaby, West Park, Selby.

HISTORY shows second rate music hall comedians don’t succeed as Prime Ministers.

Meanwhile, when the Archbishop of York (The Yorkshire Post, October 11), stops preaching about child poverty and instigates practical solutions, utilising the Church of England’s enormous property wealth, his views will be more worthy of attention.

From: Mr PL Taylor, Milner Street, Lockwood, Huddersfield.

VETERAN Tory MP Sir Peter Bottomley – the Father of the House of Commons – has suggested that MPs living on an £82,000 salary have it “desperately difficult”.

Goodness me. I wish I had the same financial worries as that out-of-touch individual.

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