Mike Black was born in Cambridge and has lived here all his life. He studied history at Nottingham University. Mike spent most of his career enforcing the National Minimum Wage, one of Labour’s greatest successes, by visiting employers and instructing them to boost workers’ pay when wages were illegally low. Mike was Branch Secretary in Cambridge for PCS, the civil servants’ union.

Mike is currently employed as a punt chauffeur giving guided tours on the river Cam. He is also a keen Cambridge United supporter ever since watching their first league victory against Oldham Athletic.

Mike says: “I joined the Labour Party because I was appalled at the destruction wrought by the Thatcher Government’s public sector cuts and privatisation agenda. Cambridge is a surprisingly unequal city, and I fully support the anti-poverty strategies of our Labour city council. My grandparents lived in council houses in Cambridge and Great Shelford, and I am proud that Cambridge Labour Party is delivering an ambitious council house building programme with over 500 new council homes built and many more to come over the course of the next decade.

I can’t forgive the Tories for the standard of care my mother experienced in underfunded and understaffed privatised care homes where the bells requesting urgent assistance never stopped ringing. Social care is in crisis, caught between Tory cuts and the greed of private contractors for profit. This has a devastating effect on the service provided and the wages and conditions of people working in the sector, who deserve to be treated with more respect. The crisis is especially acute for domiciliary care workers who frequently get less than the National Minimum Wage because their employers do not pay for their travel between calls.

In my job enforcing the National Minimum Wage I learned a lot about the social care sector, and I secured a lot of back pay for underpaid care workers. I hope to use my expertise on low pay to boost campaigns to persuade employers to pay a real Living wage, and push the County Council to secure decent pay not only for its own staff but for those working for firms that take contracts from the council as well. I enthusiastically support Labour’s policies for a public sector national care service modelled on the NHS.I want to see a socialist society where poverty is eradicated, and we all have the right to first class education and health care, decent wages and pensions, and social care that provides dignity in our old age.”