Crime and Courts Bill [HL]
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley)
Before I call Amendment 16, I must tell your Lordships that if it is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 17 to 19 for reasons of pre-emption.
Amendment 16
Queen’s Speech
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
Like so many of your Lordships who, during the many long hours that we spent in your Lordships’ House on the Health and Social Care Bill, argued that we needed to make that Bill—now an Act —worthy of its title and to properly integrate social care with healthcare, I was immensely disappointed to be presented with the offer of only a draft Bill on social care in the gracious Speech. It is indeed sad that we are missing what many observers believe is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to integrate care delivery systems in a way that matches the experience of the user, whose care is not needed in neat packages labelled “health” or “social care”. Users need care which crosses lives and boundaries, both geographical and organisational, and which is funded in a variety of ways: by the state, charities, the individual and families.
My own Government missed an opportunity in this regard in the late 1990s when they established their royal commission on social care. Given the consensus around the Dilnot proposals, it is a bitter disappointment that the coalition is set to do the same. Indeed, the disappointment is even greater in the case of the coalition because of the huge consensus around the Dilnot proposals and the promises that have been made. My noble friend Lord Warner was a distinguished member of the Dilnot commission. As I and others have said endlessly in this Chamber, you will never be able to deliver an efficient National Health Service if you do not integrate it properly with social care and national assessment criteria and provide absolute clarity about what individuals and their families can expect. As the Care and Support Alliance put it in a letter to the Prime Minister, reminding him about his legacy for the future:
“Social care is in crisis. The system is chronically underfunded and in urgent need of reform. Without this too many older and disabled people will be left in desperate circumstances, struggling on alone, living in misery and fear, in danger of losing our savings, our dignity, our independence”.
The letter has already been cited by the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale.
However, we are where we are and, if we cannot have proper integration, we must at least ensure that the draft Bill that we are to see—no doubt following the long-expected White Paper—corrects some of the anomalies of the current situation. We must be thankful at least that the Government seem set to amend the confused law around this topic, following the excellent proposals in the Law Commission report.
I wish to focus particularly on what the main providers of care—those 6 million carers—urgently need from this draft Bill. I remind your Lordships that there is a very strong economic as well as moral case for supporting carers. Not only do they save the nation nearly £120 billion every year, but annually 1 million people give up work to care for others. A recent report by Carers UK, Growing the Care Market, cited by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, suggests that a lack of stimulation of the care market means that we are missing out on about 100,000 potential jobs every year. Heaven knows, we need potential jobs, given the current situation. According to new figures from the LSE, around £1.3 billion annually is lost in revenue from carers who are unable to work and have to rely on state benefits.
Most people will become carers at some point in their lives. They provide substantial care. Those who do so for long hours are twice as likely to suffer ill health as those who do not. The majority of carers of working age say that they wish to work but the services are not there to support them. Speaking to such a carer yesterday, I was very hard-pressed to explain why we in this House had spent almost four days contemplating our navels and discussing House of Lords reform when we had not given the same attention to this urgent issue.
Social care legislation is a complex web spanning 60 years of legislation, with more than 43 different statutes and countless pieces of guidance with the force of law. Many statutes overlap, some have slightly different interpretations and some slightly contradict each other. A new law could streamline and simplify matters, making it easier for public organisations to deliver services more efficiently and helping service delivery organisations to explain and deliver against new legislation. We might then finally get to the stage where people understand what their entitlements are. So far as concerns carers, such a law needs to incorporate at least all the rights in the three major cornerstones of carers legislation, which were all Private Members’ Bills, promoted and supported by MPs and Peers from all parties in Parliament. They are the Carers (Recognition and Services) Act, the Carers and Disabled Children Act and the Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act.
Two other vital elements must be addressed: portability and national assessment criteria. In order to create truly personalised services, we must have a system that allows people to move from one area to another without interruption of their care. In order to make proper care a reality, it is vital that we have national eligibility criteria, as suggested by the Dilnot commission.
I welcome the opportunity offered by the Minister to scrutinise draft legislation before it is introduced in Parliament. We need to do that, and we also need to ensure that the user and carer organisations have an opportunity to contribute to that draft scrutiny. I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that that is the Government’s intention. I also urge the Government to bring forward new legislation at the earliest opportunity, setting out a clear timescale for doing so. Legislation must start its journey in Parliament in this Session. Further delay will raise alarm and concern.
Talking of alarm and concern, I return to the issue of funding. Reform of the legal basis and structure of social care cannot solve the current crisis in care unless it comes hand in hand with reform of social care funding. We urgently need to bring forward measures to correct the funding crisis and to meet existing unmet need so that a sustainable, long-term settlement is created between the state, the community and the family to meet rising demand.
International Women’s Day
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate. I apologise in advance for having to leave the Chamber during part of it but it is for a reason that I hope noble Lords will find entirely appropriate: it is to show some young schoolgirls around the exhibition in the Royal Gallery.
I have spoken in many debates on or around International Women’s Day since I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House and I have always taken the opportunity to focus on the role of carers. I make no apology for doing so again in this debate, which focuses on women’s contribution to economic growth. I do so, first, because carers annually contribute £119 billion to the economy through the care they provide free—if they did not do this, we would have to provide the equivalent of another NHS in terms of funding—and, secondly, because most carers are women, totalling 58 per cent according to the 2001 Census. Female carers are also more likely to be heavy-end carers, caring for more than one ill or disabled person, and to be what we call “sandwich carers”, caring for young children and elderly parents simultaneously. This means that women are more likely to give up work to care, with only a third of female heavy-end carers able to stay in work. I want to focus on how this caring role inhibits the contribution that they could otherwise make.
Women who give up work to care between the ages of 55 and 64, at the peak of their careers, typically lose over £15,000 a year. The peak age when carers give up work to care is also the time when most employees are at the peak of their careers. In a Carers UK survey, 34 per cent of the women who gave up work to care did so between the ages of 40 and 54. In addition to long-term costs for individuals, women find it hard to return to work after years spent caring, and this brings costs to employers, who lose staff at the peak of their skills and experience. A survey by Carers UK found that 70 per cent of female carers who gave up work to care wished that they could still work but believed that their caring responsibilities made it impossible.
Workplace recognition and support for carers is improving, and we must pay tribute to the previous Government and this one for that. Most carers now have the legal right to request flexible working from their employer, and it is welcome that the Government are consulting on extending the right to request that to all employees. Members of Employers for Carers, set up by Carers UK, are leading the way in implementing carer-friendly employment policies. These employers, ranging from BT and British Gas to smaller manufacturing businesses, point to clear improvements in staff retention rates, reducing the costs that would be involved in recruitment and retraining if staff were forced to give up work to care.
However, what often prevents families juggling work and care is the inability to access reliable social care support of quality. One in five carers who had been forced to give up work said that this was because of an inability to access support from local social care services, with a similar number finding services too expensive or inflexible. With an estimated £1 billion in cuts to social care services last year and with directors of social services predicting further cuts at a similar level this year, there is a risk that the pressure on women being able to work will grow.
Despite some improvements and greater public awareness of the issues, there are still too few carers getting help early enough in their caring role. As a society, we are not investing sufficiently in care, and that has very important consequences for the future. Families will be less likely to be in work and the economy will miss out on an estimated £750 million to £1.5 billion in earnings each year, according to research by the University of Birmingham. Over recent years, the UK has seen a 50 per cent increase in the number of people providing round-the-clock care—and I mean 24 hours, seven days a week. Without significant investment in social care, more families will have to provide large amounts of care, often falling out of work in order to do so.
How we support carers is a growing issue with the combined effect of the significant increase in the number of people who need care through frailty and disability and a significant reduction in public spending. How we support families who provide care is a global challenge. The issues facing us here in the UK are replicated throughout Europe and the industrialised world.
We need to think differently about how care is provided and about how we support families who decide to provide that care unpaid. Just as the increased participation of women in the labour market led to better and more provision of childcare, so care services must be seen as an enabler as our population ages. The economic value of better support for women which enables them to combine childcare and work is estimated to be between £15 billion and £23 billion a year. It is time that caring for disabled and older relatives was seen in the same light.
As the Government prepare to publish a White Paper on social care reform, it is crucial that we see care and support services as a driver for the workforce inclusion of carers, and particularly women. Only in this way will we enable women to participate fully in the workforce and therefore to contribute to economic growth as they and we would wish.
Disabled People
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley)
My Lords, the time allotted for this debate has now elapsed. Does the noble Lord wish to withdraw his Motion?
