Labour needs Angela Rayner back around the Cabinet table, Wes Streeting has said.
Mr Streeting said the former deputy prime minister, who resigned after a row over her tax affairs, had led the charge on changes in the social care sector since Labour took office last year.
Delegates at the party’s Liverpool conference took to their feet as the Health Secretary praised Ms Rayner.
He said: “We’ve delivered the biggest uplift in carers’ allowance since the 1970s, an extra £2,000 for family carers, because their work is not just loving, it’s lifesaving.
“We’ve installed new home adaptations in the homes of more than 15,000 disabled people, not just giving them new rails and chairlifts, accessible kitchens and bathrooms, but safety, dignity, independence, quality of life.”
Mr Streeting also announced a fair pay agreement for care workers, with a £500 million investment to improve their pay and conditions.
He told delegates he wanted to be “clear about how this change has came about”, and named the Unison and GMB trade unions who he said “stood up for care workers when no-one else would”.
Mr Streeting added that Ms Rayner “understands the struggle care workers face, because she was one”.
He continued: “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.”
After lengthy applause, Mr Streeting said: “We’ll definitely make sure she sees that.
“We need her back.”
Former foreign secretary David Lammy replaced Ms Rayner, the Ashton-under-Lyne MP, in the reshuffle which followed her resignation earlier this month.
Ministerial standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus probed widely reported allegations about Ms Rayner’s property ownership at the start of September.
He said he believed she had acted in “good faith” but that “the responsibility of any taxpayer for reporting their tax returns and settling their liabilities rests ultimately with themselves”.
The ethics watchdog found Ms Rayner’s failure to settle her full stamp duty liability, along with the fact that this was only established following media scrutiny of her tax affairs, led him to consider the ministerial code had been breached.
