Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Lords Hansard - Part 3 & Committee stage
Tuesday 18th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle. I give my very strong support to Amendment 47, to which I added my name, and Amendment 52. The key arguments have been extremely powerfully made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and others.

My main concern is to make it abundantly clear that I and everyone I know who supports assisted dying also want to see the highest possible quality of palliative care across the country—not some kind of patchwork, but universally. I, like all noble Lords, have witnessed wonderful palliative care but also what I might describe as substandard care of dying people. The difference to the patient and the relatives is unforgettable for everybody involved. I visited a beautiful hospice with a warm and professional atmosphere recently, but there were empty beds because it had not been able to raise enough money from whatever it was—jumble sales, et cetera. It is entirely unacceptable that hospices are expected to raise funds to provide their services.

As I said, I also support Amendment 52, which details the types of services that must be provided as part of this country’s commitment to providing accessible and excellent care. The inclusion of the definition of palliative care as provided by the World Health Organization would ensure statutory recognition for this most important aspect of healthcare.

Finally, we need to accept that top-quality palliative care must involve patients’ wishes being understood and respected. Patient choice is more and more accepted throughout the NHS, but it is most important at the end of life. Central to top-quality palliative care will be the right of patients ultimately to decide how much suffering they wish to bear and when they have had enough. The lack of control under the current law will inevitably undermine the patient experience of palliative care, however devoted the staff.

The great majority of dying patients will die naturally, even when assisted dying becomes lawful. However, the great majority of dying people will live and die better knowing that they will have some control when it really matters—when their suffering is no longer bearable.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, whatever view we take on assisted dying, I think that there is general agreement that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, deserves a great deal of support in her two amendments. The predicament that we find ourselves in is that the Minister will probably reject them and say that the Government will ensure that the NHS prioritises these services in the future. The trouble is that we have been here many times before, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said. He mentioned 2016, but in 2015 the Economist produced its last quality of death index, as far as I can find out, which basically said that the UK had the best palliative care in the world, but it was very patchy. I am afraid that the situation has simply not moved on.

So the question is: what should we do? Clearly, it is not going to get better if you leave it to the health service. It treats hospices dreadfully, with continuous late contract signing and short-term contract signing by bodies that should be able to agree three-year rolling contracts with those institutions. The lack of priority that is given suggests to me that, unless we take legislative action, we will not see any improvement at all. That is the quandary for us in terms of collectively agreeing a way forward that makes it clear to the NHS that time is up on its neglect of palliative care. We really must take action.

Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, we shall come to Amendment 20, in the name of my noble friend Lord Lipsey and that of other noble Lords, including me, in a moment. However, I want to ask the noble Earl about the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, in relation to independent advocacy. The noble Baroness raised a pertinent point about what responsibility there is on a local authority to engage with the advocate. I hope that the noble Earl will provide the House with more information. Clearly, this is a step forward, which is to be welcomed, but one needs some assurance that the advocacy system will work effectively. It would be helpful to know what the noble Earl’s department thinks might be the appropriate response of a local authority where an advocate has come to the fore.

I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. It is one thing to provide information support grudgingly; another to be proactive in doing so. Perhaps the noble Earl would comment in particular on Clause 4, because there is a world of difference between Clause 4(1), in which a local authority must,

“establish and maintain a service for providing people in its area with information and advice”,

and Clause 4(2), which goes on to describe what type of advice. This does not assure us that a local authority will be effective in doing so. I should be grateful if the noble Earl would explain how this will be monitored. Will the Government have a role in reviewing the effectiveness of local authorities in providing that?

If one is resident in an area where the local authority does not seem to provide an effective information and advice service, what recourse does one have? I assume that there would be judicial review and the ombudsman, but those are heavy-handed approaches and it would be helpful to know whether the Government have thought through ways in which members of the public can draw attention to failures to provide effective information and advice in some local authority areas.

That might pick up on the amendment relating to the use of professionally qualified social workers. My noble friend Lord Warner, with a great deal of experience, has suggested that even in areas where there are complex needs, a qualified social worker need not necessarily provide this support. None the less, one wants some assurance that sufficient provision for support will be given. Again, it comes back to the issue of how we will monitor the performance of local authorities.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, perhaps as a point of information in response to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, I should clarify that my amendment does not suggest that qualified social workers should provide financial advice, for example. The important point about the role of these qualified social workers is that they are used to co-ordinating services for people and would be well aware of the need for financial and all sorts of other advice. Therefore, in relation to people with very complex needs, they are in a good position to make sure that all the bits of the jigsaw are actually provided. That was the objective behind the amendment.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, we now move on to another group on the regulation of healthcare workers, and social care workers as well. In debate in Committee, I made it clear that I was concerned about the decision of the Government to abolish the General Social Care Council and to transfer responsibility for regulation of social care workers to the Health Professions Council. I am concerned for two reasons. First, I know that the General Social Care Council had rather a bumpy ride to start with and was the subject of a review, which was critical of the way in which it performed. However, it is right to pay tribute to the tremendous work undertaken in the last two years under its current leadership and the chairmanship of Mrs Rosie Varley to improve and enhance the quality of the regulation by the council. It is very disappointing that the Government have decided that, just at the time when the GSCC is starting to prove itself, the whole thing is to be dismantled and the function transferred to the Health Professions Council.

I also do not understand why the Health Professions Council is considered to be the right regulator for social workers. There is a difference between social work and health work. We touched on that in the last debate. I agree with what the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said in response to the noble Baroness when he reflected on the value of social care workers but also on the difference in role. The Health Professions Council regulates a number of bodies, but they all have a health basis in the main. Therefore, it stretches the imagination to see how this body will effectively regulate social care workers in the future. The profession of social work is pretty fragile and having its own regulator is one of the building blocks for boosting the status, confidence and quality of the social work profession.

I oppose the abolition of the GSCC and the transfer of social worker regulation to the HPC in principle. If I am unsuccessful in persuading the Government, even at this stage, to change their mind, I suggest that a number of issues would help to reassure me and many social workers about the way in which the HPC will perform. This is why I have a number of amendments, which seek to ensure that there is an appropriate definition of “social worker”. I think that it would be appropriate, inside the HPC, to establish an office of chief social worker. I also think that the name of the HPC should recognise that it is regulating the social work profession. I have not yet had any rational answer as to why “Social Work”, or something of the sort, should not appear in the title of the HPC. We know that the reason is that the HPC has refused to have it. I think that the department is finding it difficult to tell the HPC that it is subject to parliamentary provision and that it is not enough, simply because it does not want “Social Work” in its title, not to agree to it. I refer the noble Earl, Lord Howe, to the Bill before us. It refers, in these clauses, to a number of orders, including health and social work orders. Therefore, there clearly cannot be an objection in principle to the use of “Social Work” in the title. It is totemic, but it is at least a way of showing the 100,000 individuals in the social work profession to be covered that in fact the HPC is not going to continue with a medical model of regulation.

My final point is this. I invite the noble Earl to state clearly that it is not his department’s intention that the HPC should eventually take over the regulation of nurses and doctors. He will know that a review is being undertaken of the Nursing and Midwifery Council and I gather that there are also proposals to change the governance of the General Medical Council. A number of people in the health service have told me that they think the eventual aim is for the HPC to regulate all the healthcare professions. The noble Earl would provide a great deal of reassurance if he would say that it is not his department’s long-term ambition to turn the HPC into the sole regulator of all the health and social care professions. I for one would be very concerned about that. I beg to move.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 241C, which is tabled in my name. I also support the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. I was tempted to add my name to them, but I was a bit late yesterday. These amendments concern the implications of abolishing the General Social Care Council and the dilution or indeed the elimination of some of the functions carried out by that body. I thank the Minister for the briefing meeting that he held yesterday. At the tail end of this most unpopular of Bills, and after what I gather have been more than 100 meetings with Peers and others, I want to acknowledge the extraordinary work that the noble Earl has done throughout.

The social work profession is perhaps the most battered profession in this country and, if I may say so, the previous Government did not help in that. A certain Secretary of State for Education in the other place took what I thought was completely unreasonable action following the Baby P incident, which left the social work profession pretty much on its knees. The idea of having a chief social worker in this country who would act as a spokesperson for social work—someone who would promote and defend it—is enormously justified at a time when the profession, as I say, is on its knees. It is very difficult to appoint good people because of the reputation of the profession and because of the actions of that Secretary of State. He happens to be a friend of mine, but I think that he made a terrible error on that occasion.

Amendment 241C seeks to ensure that best interest assessors under the Mental Capacity Act continue to have their training regulated. I realise that the Government’s agenda is to reduce regulation wherever possible and I broadly support that objective, because we have had too much regulation in this country. But there are limits to that process and I believe that this is one issue over which the Government have in fact gone beyond a reasonable limit. Post-qualification training is currently regulated by the General Social Care Council, but under the Bill only the training of approved Mental Health Act practitioners will be regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council. Although the GSCC accepts that it could have done a better job with that regulatory power, to do away with it altogether seems to be the absolute opposite of the right answer.

Why is this important? It is because the issue here is often about the deprivation of liberty of elderly patients with dementia and those with severe learning difficulties. Civilised countries always take extra care in protecting individuals where their liberty is being taken from them. It is somewhat arbitrary that these groups happen to fall into the ambit of the Mental Capacity Act on the one hand and that of the Mental Health Act on the other. I am sure that in time those two pieces of legislation will be brought together, but in the mean time we have to manage the fact that people are being detained either under the Mental Health Act or the Mental Capacity Act and that very similar processes are under way in the two sets of circumstances. Mental Capacity Act clients in residential homes or nursing homes, for example, who do not have the capacity to make their own decisions about their lives, are in essentially the same position as psychiatric patients who are not able to make a rational decision about whether they need to be detained in hospital.

Psychiatric patients are assessed by approved Mental Health Act practitioners to determine whether they warrant that detention. In Mental Capacity Act cases, the professional is assessing whether a particular decision is in the best interests of the patient or resident, assuming that the patient does not have the capacity to make the decision for themselves. In both cases this is likely to involve assessing whether the individual can live safely at home. That is the whole point. People are assessing pretty much the same thing under the two different pieces of legislation. It is true that in some cases approved mental health practitioners have to assess the risk to others, but the issues are honestly very similar. Is there any logic, therefore, in regulating one and not the other? We know that abuse of these adults is commonplace. Relatives may of course be absolute angels in terms of protecting their family members, but they may not be, and the best interest assessor is there to protect vulnerable people when relatives let them down.

The words of Mr Justice Peter Jackson in his ruling in the London Borough of Hillingdon v Steven Neary and Mark Neary and the Equality and Human Rights Commission highlight the importance of the deprivation of liberty safeguards. The deprivation of liberty safeguards were designed to protect the human rights of some of our most vulnerable people. Employers and supervisory bodies have to be sure that the professionals they charge with undertaking this vital role are competent, compassionate and able to approach the situation from both a practice and legislative basis. With the closure of the GSCC, I urge the Minister to put in place a system at least as robust as the current one, and ideally more robust, to ensure that the providers of training for best interest assessors can clearly demonstrate their ability to produce and, importantly, assess potential best interest assessors. That would go a long way towards protecting some of these very vulnerable citizens.

I want to turn briefly to a number of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The first concerns student registration, which we discussed in detail at the briefing meeting yesterday. I shall not go into all the detail again. However, it has to be said that if it is justified to register social workers, it has to be justified to register social work students. That is because these people are unknown and untried. They go into vulnerable people’s homes on their own and they are probably more of a potential risk to their clients than qualified social workers. There is once again an issue of logic here, which I hope the noble Earl will take seriously.

A further concern is that, as I understand it, the Health and Care Professions Council will not introduce the satisfactorily assessed and supported year in employment as a requirement before someone can be accredited as a fully qualified social worker. This is another important safeguard, as people have to prove themselves over the course of a year’s work. There is no great administrative problem about this. It is simply a requirement so that employers meet certain standards. I would argue that it is not a bureaucratic nonsense; it is an important requirement.

Finally, there is to be no regulation of social care workers. The arguments that were rehearsed in the previous debate probably apply just as much to this one. The case for statutory regulation where vulnerable people and low-paid workers are concerned seems absolutely overwhelming. Again, I hope that the noble Earl might agree also to have a review of this area. At the minimum, is the process of voluntary regulation really working?

I fear that the Government have gone too far in dismantling the protections for vulnerable clients. Of course employers and universities have important responsibilities for their workers and clients, but I hope that even at this late stage the noble Earl might want to maintain some state responsibility for the protection of these most vulnerable clients when their liberty may be taken from them.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Monday 19th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

If I were to say that I did not trust the Health Professions Council, that might be taken as rather pejorative, and I would not seek to do that. It has done a good job on the health professions it regulates. I simply do not feel that it is right for it to regulate social workers. I do not think that it is prepared for it. Its philosophy is not attuned to it. That is why, if the Government insist on going ahead, some protection needs to be given.

My final amendment relates to the name of the new HPC, the Health and Care Professions Council. I am puzzled why “social worker” is not in the title. Why was it felt that when bringing 100,000 people into this body, it was not thought worth putting “social worker” in the title. I do not think that Health and Care Professions Council can possibly describe a body that will regulate 100,000 social workers.

I hope that the Government will be prepared to consider the matter again. I know that they want to reduce the number of quangos and regulators, although, if the noble Baroness had been here for the Statement on the banking system, she would have discovered that all Governments start by having a bonfire of the quangos and then inevitably they start to grow again. We saw in the past few minutes a good example of the Government starting to grow some new regulators. In this case, I do not think that the issue of money comes into it—the cost of the balance sheet is taken off the public purse, because it will be funded by registering. Because I am satisfied that the General Social Care Council can fund this through fees which would be similar to those of the Health Professions Council, I hope that the Government will give this further consideration.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I support the opposition of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to Clauses 206 and 208 to 211 standing part of the Bill, and will also speak to Amendment 338B. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has elaborated these issues extremely comprehensively and powerfully. I want to avoid duplication and will therefore concentrate on a few specific concerns that, for me, are the most serious, although the matters raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, are also important to me.

Social work carries onerous public protection responsibilities that, to my mind, differentiate it importantly from the other professions regulated by the Health Professions Council. One issue that highlights that problem is the registration of social work students referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. This and other key matters are left to regulation under Clause 208 without any clarification of what that will mean in practice.

It is important to bear in mind that social work students have direct and unsupervised contact with vulnerable people, including children, whose lives may be at risk. That is rather different from the contact that other professionals tend to have with individuals. Following an impact assessment, the GSCC, not surprisingly, concluded that compulsory student registration was necessary. At present, the GSCC makes grants to the universities providing social work training. Those grants are conditional on the registration of students. The result is that 95 per cent of students are in fact registered. I am not sure what happened to the other 5 per cent, but in essence it is a form of compulsory registration of students.

As a result, any serious complaint about the conduct of a social work student can be referred for investigation by the GSCC. Although the number of serious complaints is small, it is larger than that of complaints about other professions. It is very important that these individuals are picked up early before they can do any severe damage to young children, or indeed other children. If a student is found guilty of misconduct and dismissed from their course, they cannot simply go across to the other side of London or to Newcastle and register on a different course, as this will be picked up by the GSCC. However, that will be lost in the new system. This system of student registration seems to be an important safeguard in public protection.

As I understand it, the HPC is consulting on whether the registration of students should be purely voluntary, as it is in the other health professions regulated by the HPC and as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The concern is that the consultation includes all the health professions, which of course will say that registration does not need to be compulsory, and indeed it does not for these other professions. Any social work professional will recognise the importance of the compulsory registration of students, but of course they will be outnumbered by all the other professions. As a result, social work registration is likely—in fact, almost certain—to become voluntary. I understand that Paul Burstow, the Minister in the other place, has some concerns about this. Can the Minister tell the Committee what progress has been made to ensure that social work registration remains, de facto, compulsory under the student arrangements?

It is worth flagging up that Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland will continue to have compulsory registration of social work students, and England will be out of line if this provision goes ahead. As a result, inappropriate students—potentially dangerous social workers—will come across the border into this country and practise. Do we really want that to happen?

Another issue is the assessed and supported year in employment—the ASYE. This is not yet in place but has been recommended by the Social Work Reform Board and is supported by the GSCC. I understand that senior social work professionals do not expect the HPC to introduce the assessed and supported year for newly qualified social workers because they want a common system for all professionals, as alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. This provision is not necessary for professionals without a public and child protection responsibility.

Again, there is a problem here because of the differences between social work on the one hand and all the other professions on the other. As someone who practised social work—albeit briefly and many years ago—I fully appreciate the importance of a year immediately following qualification when social workers carry a lighter case load and receive support with more hands-on supervision to enable them to consolidate their knowledge. You could say that this was all a bit heavy-handed if it were not for the public and child protection duties of these workers. However, it really is important that those people know what they are doing and that they do not miss high-risk cases.

The GSCC wants the assessed and supported year to be a registration requirement in the future. Northern Ireland has this system. Of course, this would need to be tied in with some control over the number of social work trainees, but in my view it is a very important matter. What are the Minister’s plans in this regard?

My third area of concern is the standard of social work training. Those at the head of the GSCC would agree that we need more, rather than less, rigorous regulation of social work training. Social work standards set by the Department of Health have already fallen over a period; certainly they are quite unrecognisable to me. I think all of us who are aware of the Baby P report would agree with that assertion. We can expect these standards to fall further under the HPC because, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned, the HPC has basic standards across all professions at roughly NVQ level 3—not a degree level and not, in my view, a sufficiently high level—and just a few generic standards for each profession. It is not looking for intellectual rigour and does not have practice standards. Its focus is on outputs, which we all recognise and think are a thoroughly good thing. However, we all know that outputs based on book learning without any fieldwork requirements will miss absolutely essential elements of effective social work professional practice. The Social Work Reform Board is setting higher standards but these will not be regulated. Only the most basic standards set by the HPC will have that regulatory framework.

The Government are, I believe, leaving it to the yet-to-exist College of Social Work to promote excellence in social work. The BASW is challenging the establishment of the college, I understand. Will it exist and, if it does, will it be delayed? If so, for how long? I gather that even when it does exist, the college will be toothless—it will have no powers to regulate training at all. It may set standards of excellence but it will have no powers to ensure that those standards are met. Does the Minister agree that social work standards need to rise, not fall? If so, will she agree to take away these concerns and consider how best to ensure meaningful progress on the issue? That is vital to the protection of children and to avoid more Baby P scandals, with huge embarrassment to the Government. I trust that the Minister will take this seriously.

Finally, I ask the Minister what will become of the GSCC code of practice for social care workers, which is another group altogether. It is important that this code of practice is retained as an element in the standards framework for social care. This is all about standards and the quality of provision. Will this code of practice be hosted by Skills for Care in the interim before any registration of these workers, or will it be lost? I reinforce the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the spurious financial justification for the abolition of the GSCC. I, too, understand that, financially, keeping the GSCC would stand up perfectly well—it could be self-funding on a similar basis to the HPC. I hope that the Minister will be able to explain this.

Very real risks arise from this planned merger. England will move out of line with its neighbouring countries, and we will reduce standards and safeguards in a profession at the front line of child protection. Is it really too late to rethink this high-risk plan?