AS Labour’s conference takes place in Liverpool, it comes on the back of an increasingly divided and extreme Conservative conference, and a stunning by-election win taking a seat from the SNP in Rutherglen and Hamilton.

With that win confirming Labour’s polling lead, it is increasingly likely that Labour will be in a strong position to win a majority government at the next election.

The opportunity that a majority government will bring is the chance to heal the austerity attacks on our public services and assaults on people’s pay over the last 13 years.

Public services have been decimated. Public buildings are literally crumbling. And public-sector pay has collapsed in real terms, causing a crisis in staffing retention and recruitment.

The cause of that staffing crisis is the scale of that decline in pay — particularly in the public sector — has seen it dubbed a “lost decade” by the trade union movement.

The cumulative effect of below-inflation changes resulted in the latest full-time equivalent pay levels of around £4,670 less for nurses and £8,590 less for teachers than if pay had increased in line with CPI inflation since the Conservatives came to power in 2010. There are similar losses across other public service roles.

This has not been lost on the trade union movement who have delivered a year of significant industrial militancy, following a long period of quiet from Britain’s trade unions through the late 1990s and 2000s.

That militancy has been driven by economic circumstance. The highest rates of inflation for 30 years, limiting what people’s salaries and social security can pay for each week, has been matched by a 30-year high in strike action as workers demand their pay keeps up.

This year of action sets out a clear policy demand for Labour to address going into the next election, and also, given the polling success the party currently enjoys, a serious policy matter they need to address early on in a new parliament, particularly if Keir Starmer is in Downing Street.

When I hosted a debate on public-sector pay ballots in November 2022, I said we were looking at a potential 1.5 million public-sector workers being balloted on the Tories’ low-pay agenda. The public-sector workforce, including non-union members, is significantly bigger and a key constituency to retain the support of.

Polling analysis shows public-sector workers have a tendency to support Labour, but this year’s strike action shows they have found their own voice.

We have seen a degree of co-ordination between some unions, as agreed by last year’s TUC conference, but it clearly could have been broader and engaged more trade union members.

But we should also recognise that the action taken did win concessions, it did win better pay awards, and the key lesson is that organising and campaigning, while it can be hard, works.

Public -sector workers are likely to welcome an incoming Labour government, but they do so in the expectation it will offer an alternative agenda on pay.

The last Labour manifesto in 2019 said Labour would restore public-sector pay to at least pre-financial crisis levels (in real terms), by delivering year-on-year above-inflation pay rises, starting with a 5 per cent increase, to reward and retain the people who do so much for us all.

We have had four more years of real-terms pay cuts since then.

That’s why a couple of weeks ago in Liverpool, in the same conference centre Labour is meeting in, the TUC agreed it would campaign for Labour to commit to funding pay increases for public-sector workers that at least match inflation and provide for pay restoration.

That has to be our goal.

With public-sector workers now missing out on thousands of pounds a year due to below-inflation rises since 2010, there are informed estimates which say it would cost around £15 billion this year to lift median pay to the value it was back then — pay restoration to the real-terms value that people earned at least in 2010.

And then going forward, we need a serious conversation to remunerate public servants — especially health workers — so they don’t receive real-terms pay cuts again, and their salary matches their value to society.

It is a serious proposal. It is expensive, but it is affordable, and it is worth it. Labour needs to consider again how it will increase revenue for these necessary policies and that means levying a fair proportion of taxation on unearned wealth.

As has been regularly stated by the TUC, equalising the capital gains tax rates with income tax would only be fair — and it would cover the cost of public-sector pay restoration.

That is why Labour should state this week, that the next Labour government will restore public-sector pay at least to the value it was worth in 2010, before it again faces re-election.

That will be a clear pledge. Something to deliver. And something to earn Labour’s re-election.

People need hope. And people need delivery. Labour has to deliver change and for people to see that and welcome that.

What we want is a Labour government that will deliver on pay.

Beth Winter is Labour MP for Cynon Valley. Follow her on X @BethWinterMP.