BRITAIN’S largely privatised social care system should be recognised as a “national asset because our loved ones are not profit margins,” general union GMB demanded today.

Delegates at the union’s annual congress in Brighton enthusiastically endorsed calls for Tory ministers to follow the examples of Scotland and Wales and kick start moves to bring the austerity-crippled sector into a national care service.

The move, accompanied by a £15-an-hour minimum wage, would help to end the “national scandal of care workers struggling on poverty wages as the worst operators look to squeeze every last penny into shareholder hands and tax havens,” central executive council member Amanda Burley said.

The essential sector’s workforce should also be included in statutory protections against physical assaults on emergency workers as “attacks and abuse, both physical and verbal, are just accepted as part of the job,” her Midlands colleague Tracey Ashton said.

London delegate Mary Goodson said: “Our care workers are not valued and recognised for the invaluable, vital role they perform.

“Years of underfunding and the results of recruitment and retention crisis have led to already difficult work becoming harder.”

She warned of 165,000 vacancies nationwide but hailed GMB’s commitment to “fighting and making things better.”

Fellow member Michelle Hunt said that the issue is one “we all need to care about, because one day, every single one of us will need social care in one way or another.”

The Yorkshire delegate slammed “truly shocking” Thatcher-era reforms which forced care providers to compete with each other, saying it had helped to create a situation where “amazing key workers are being pushed to breaking point.”

Liz Martin from the union’s Scotland branch argued that the system is “beyond crisis and already broken” but warned the workforce is “not going back in the box” after the horrors of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

To rapturous applause in the Brighton Centre, she said: “We’ll fight for £15 an hour, we’ll fight for better terms and conditions, we’ll fight to be valued, we’ll fight for respect and we’ll fight for a better social care system.”

And referring to care workers taking better-paid jobs at US-owned online retail giant Amazon, despite allegations of dangerous working conditions, Welsh delegate Yvonne Healy said: “If our members would prefer to work for Amazon, where employees leave in ambulances, there is something really wrong with our country.”