A crisis reveals the best in people, and the best in a country.

This pandemic is a hardship which transcends ordinary divisions.

We are seeing the people of the UK rise to the challenge.

Hundreds of thousands of people have volunteered to help the NHS tackle COVID-19. And I’ve seen countless small acts of kindness and community all around me.

So I want to celebrate the achievement of our NHS staff, many of whom have left behind their families to look after ours.  

It’s not just our amazing front-line health workers. I’ve found myself newly aware and grateful of all the strangers who quietly work, each and every day, to keep the world running. Too often, their essential work is overlooked and taken for granted.

From supermarket cashiers and shelf-stockers, to binmen, train drivers and cleaners, they are all risking their safety to go into work and keep the UK running.

But these workers, who have been proven to be essential, would be classified as “unskilled” under proposed immigration rules. I don’t think the carers, hospital cleaners and ambulance drivers who are fighting this pandemic should be made to feel unwelcome and “unskilled”.

An IPPR study showed two thirds of people who have come from the EU to work in health and social work would not have been allowed into this country. And among shop-workers and delivery drivers, it is around 90%.

Now is the time to celebrate the contribution of all workers.  

A crisis of this magnitude can be an opportunity, to rethink our assumptions and achieve things that before seemed impossible.

Global adversity can to unite people across borders.   

Best wishes,

Naomi Smith
CEO, Best for Britain