Wes Streeting has admitted Labour “needs” Angela Rayner back in government as he dedicated his party’s new care worker pay policy to the former deputy prime minister.
The Health Secretary told the Labour Party Conference on Tuesday: "We need her back".
Streeting used the event in Liverpool to announce a £500 million investment for the first ever "fair pay agreement" for care workers, which he dedicated to his colleague who resigned earlier this month following a tax scandal.
He said: "There's someone else who's made a real difference too, who understands the struggle care workers face, because she was one.
"She brought that experience to the Cabinet table as the care worker who became our country's Deputy Prime Minister.
"Angela Rayner, this achievement is yours. Thank you. And we want her back as well."
He added: "We'll definitely make sure she sees that. We need her back."
Rayner quit as Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary on September 5 after admitting she failed to pay enough stamp duty on her new £800,000 flat in Hove.
Mr Streeting also used his conference speech to hit out at Nigel Farage, branding the Reform UK leader a "con artist" and snake oil salesman" who wanted to create an insurance-based health system.
Labour founders of the NHS created a national health service to "provide the people of our country with the care they need, not just the care they can afford", the Health Secretary told delegates.
He added: "I'm here today to defend that promise and, friends, we are in the fight of our lives, not just for the NHS or even for the survival of this Government, but for everything we believe in.
"It is a battle of progressives against reactionaries, patriotism versus nationalism, hope not hate.
"Our country is being confronted with choices about who we are and what we stand for, and nowhere do those choices come together more starkly than our National Health Service.
"The founding principles of the NHS are now contested for the first time in generations.
"Farage wants to replace the NHS with an insurance system.
"His vision for healthcare is a system that checks your pockets before your pulse and asks for your credit card before your care.
"Well, it might be right for Mr Moneybags. We know he can afford it, but what about those who can't?
"We should know by now that man is a con artist posing as the voice of the people whilst working for the interests of the powerful.
"And be in no doubt. It's not reform he's offering, it's retreat. He says we can't afford in this century the National Health Service we could afford in the last.
"Well, if that's the fight Farage wants, I say 'bring it on'."
Mr Streeting said he was at the conference not "simply to defend a service, but to uphold our values - a publicly-funded public service, free at the point of use, back on its feet and fit for the future."
He added: "Those are Labour's values, those are Britain's values, and this is a fight we will win."
Turning to what he called the "poison of post-truth politics", Mr Streeting referenced Dr Aseem Malhotra, who linked the Covid vaccine with cancer in the Royal family during a speech at Reform's conference.
"These anti-vax lies have consequences" and had led to the return of diseases such as measles and whooping cough.
He added: "When Farage was asked whether he'd side with medical scientists, he said, 'I wouldn't side with anybody'.
"Anti-science, anti-reason, anti-health.
"Nigel Farage is a snake oil salesman of British politics, and it's time to stop buying what he's selling."
