Care workers should not have to strike to be taken seriously by the government

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

’Support workers are skilled professionals with a significant range of responsibilities’ (Andrew Matthews/PA)

The same heroes for whom the nation clapped in 2020, and who have continued to go above and beyond to support older and disabled people across the country to live a better life, are bearing the brunt of public spending cuts. “Dismayed” does not begin to describe our reaction to the £250m cut to the social care workforce.

Support workers should not have to strike to be taken seriously by the government. A lack of industrial action should not be taken as an opportunity to abandon more promises. Support workers are skilled professionals with a significant range of responsibilities, yet they can walk into better-paid roles in the NHS, retail, and hospitality. And in the face of a cost of living crisis, many are doing just that. If you have a loved one who relies on care and support to live their life, you know the impact this will have.

With an average vacancy rate of 21 per cent and significant limitations to the home office sponsorship scheme, the priority must be recruitment and retention. Here at Dimensions, we are determined to pay our staff at the level they deserve and have implemented three pay awards in the last year, but we’re restricted in going further by tough limits on local authority budgets.

We won’t be deterred. We will continue to call for support worker pay to be aligned to NHS Band 3, a benchmark that reflects the skills required, and will stop our dedicated workforce from being treated as second-class citizens.

Rachael Dodgson

Chief Executive at Dimensions – a not-for-profit support provider for people with learning disabilities and autism

Life in Britain has diminished and declined

I read Sean O’Grady’s recent column with a lament in my heart as to how this country’s trajectory has spiraled down since the vote to leave the EU in 2016. I would almost go so far as to say that the Conservative government has blighted my life since they assumed power in 2010. We had David Cameron and George Osborne, insisting that we had to balance the books and issuing a punitive season of austerity. Then Cameron acceded to his right-wing MP’s wishes, and that of UKIP, and insisted on a facile “Yes/No” vote to leave our biggest trading partner, leaving him speechless and powerless at the outcome of his kamikaze gamble.

Now we have a right-wing government that wants to appear tough on everything, except for their own parlous record. We still have Boris Johnson lurking in the wings, desperate to be the comeback prime minister, and while life in Britain has diminished and declined, no one will dare to mention Brexit at Easter get-togethers for fear of upsetting everyone’s sensibilities.

I love our multicultural society and the diversity that reigns in our cities and towns, but now there is whipped-up denigration of desperate asylum seekers. I fully appreciate that the world is in a febrile state and many of our problems come from the dire war in Ukraine, but I always felt whatever party was in power, there was still a quality of tolerance and respect for other people of differing views and not this ghastly polemic state of the nation.

Judith Daniels

Norfolk

The Tories deserve all the blame they get

Steve Mackinder in his letter to The Independent writes that we should not blame the Tories for the malign effects of Brexit because "we" voted for it. However, most people who voted to leave did so out of a wish to cut immigration.

Nobody voted to be poorer. Nobody voted for a billion pound hit to GDP. Nobody voted to erect trade barriers with our neighbours. Nobody voted for insecurity over food supplies. Nobody voted for difficulties over the Irish border. Nobody voted for staff shortages in the NHS. Nobody voted for restricting our travel. Nobody voted for 18-hour delays at the port of Dover. Nobody voted to be fingerprinted when entering another European country (which will happen soon). All these are the consequences of decisions made by this Tory government and not our choices.

Instead of pursuing the soft Brexit that was the desired outcome of the referendum, the Tories are appeasing their hardliners with isolationist policies that benefit nobody except a tiny minority, and they deserve all the blame they get.

Sam Boote

Nottingham

Trying to blame the idiocy of Brexit is piffle

Keith Poole, in his letter, to The Independent manages to hang travel woes on Brexit as the Easter exodus commences and Dover (once again) is converted into the nation’s overspill car park. Now that we’re “non-EU” it seems we’re required to undergo a minute examination of our individual passports before being permitted into the EU. That seems fair enough and we all knew there was potential for notoriously scratchy French border officials to flex their Gallic muscles. The issue isn’t Brexit, it’s us being disorganised. We’ve had three years to get our non-EU house in order and frankly trying to blame the idiocy of Brexit is piffle.

Right up until the last hour, EU leaders were trying to persuade us to re-think and remain members of the EU but since we voted to leave it seems they’re determined to stick to their rights and demand to see passports as they did in our pre-EU world and if, after three years, the ferry operators and border control still haven’t managed to get their ducks in a row I’d suggest it says more about us than the EU officials at Calais.

Steve Mackinder

Denver