‘The battle of the gingers.’ That’s how Angela Rayner described her tussle with Oliver Dowden at deputy prime minister’s questions today. But it was a cosy chat rather than a vicious duel.
Dowden probed Labour’s plan to fleece businesses by raising employers’ National Insurance contributions. Rayner disregarded the issue and drawled out a reply using experimental syntax.
‘I remember the party opposite what they said to business. What was it? “Eff to business,”’ she said.
Dowden made little attempt to interrogate her and kept smirking and playing for laughs. ‘This is our last exchange across the despatch box,’ he said, fuelling rumours that he plans to give up his seat once Rishi Sunak’s replacement is announced.
‘I’ll miss our exchanges,’ simpered Rayner. Dowden tried to embarrass her by quoting her own statements on NI. Rayner had warned that ‘workers will pay when employers pass on the hike.’
Does she agree with herself? asked Dowden.
Rayner ignored this query and answered a different question. An easier question. The question she answered was, ‘what are you incredibly proud of this week?’
‘What I’m incredibly proud of is this week,’ she said, ‘is that the government brought in a new employment bill which will raise the living standards of ten million workers.’
But the cost of these living standards will be shouldered by consumers, some of them vulnerable. Daisy Cooper of the Lib Dems warned Rayner not to slap higher NI contributions on agencies that find contracts for care workers. She claimed that ‘18,000 care home providers’ will face extra costs which will mean higher fees for pensioners. It’s poor old Granny again. First, they unplug her electric fire. Now they’re raiding her piggy bank.
Cooper has a plan to mend the health service as it ‘braces itself’ for cold weather. She suggested a ‘task force’ that will ‘winter-proof the NHS’. She added that this was a ‘Liberal Democrat idea’ which scuppers the proposal instantly. No government will start a scheme that another party will claim credit for.
Cooper’s ‘task force’ sounds exciting but it means a seminar, a guest speaker and a mission statement full of jargon. She referred in passing to the real problem but she didn’t identify it specifically because the state can’t fix it. Every winter, thousands of pensioners recover in hospital but they ‘can’t be discharged because there are not the care workers in place to enable people to recover at home or in a care home,’ she said.
But why do so many pensioners live alone? The problem is fear of the elderly. Families have lost the habit of sharing a roof with their ageing relatives so they dump granny in a care home when she deserves a comfy nook in the attic where she can fade away in warmth and security. That’s the solution to the NHS crisis. But no MP will suggest it because it doesn’t involve a seminar, a guest speaker and a mission statement full of jargon.
Several backbenchers raised special needs and disability. These two categories are being conflated and treated as the same. But this confusion may harm children. A kid with poor literacy doesn’t belong in the same group as children with birth defects or mobility problems. And yet MPs lump them together.
Melanie Ward mentioned the struggles she faced raising a disabled child. She said that ‘three-quarters of parents are forced to give up work or cut their hours’ if their kids have disabilities or special educational needs.
Rayner did the same thing. ‘I pay tribute to those who work with children with SEN and disabilities.’ And she lavished praise on her own child. ‘I myself have my amazing son who does tremendously well given his challenges.’
Like Sir Keir Starmer, Rayner has a drama-queen habit of linking every issue to a personal experience. Rachael Maskell asked her to set up a ‘commission’ (meaning a ‘task force’) to examine palliative care.
Rayner remembered how she used to sit with elderly patients while the priests administered divine unction.
‘I know from my own work in this area what incredible work this is and what an honour it is to be there for someone at the end of their life.’
Even as voters die, her main concern is herself.
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