Covid-19: Social Care Services

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness for securing this vital debate, and pay tribute to those working in the care sector.

Many lessons will need to be learned after this pandemic is over, but there are things we already know. We knew, for example, that a pandemic was a national threat. Epidemics have always been a global threat, but SARS showed that an epidemic could spread to all continents in the time of a plane journey.

We have long known the weaknesses in social care. Much of Beveridge’s “cradle to the grave” support was in place by the mid-20th century—free education, unemployment support, pensions and, from 1948, free healthcare—but the one huge area not covered was social care. There was report after report in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of this one, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has just made plain. Everyone agreed that health and social care needed to be seamless.

When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2007, he lived for six weeks. In the first two weeks, he was given amazing help with pain relief. The next two weeks were simply a battle between health and social care over whose responsibility he now was. Only the last two weeks of his life were spent at home, where he wished to be.

The divisions between health and social care have been shown up in lethal form in this epidemic; hence all the problems that others have mentioned—lack of co-ordination, funding, recognition, equipment and advice—and laid out so powerfully by my noble friend Lady Tyler.

There were attempts at a cross-party agreement on social care before the 2010 election, and the Minister needs to know that his party scuppered that. In the coalition, we commissioned the Dilnot report to seek more stable funding of social care and to protect people against extreme costs, as the NHS does in healthcare. Labour supported this, which was very welcome. But after the 2015 election, it was set aside.

Many of the problems that noble Lords have raised stem from the inability to integrate health and social care properly and to value both. We must indeed never be in this situation again. When we emerge, this is an area which must be urgently and radically addressed. I hope that the Minister will tell us today that he agrees.