Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Pitkeathley and Lord Lipsey

Monday 29th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, I rise briefly to make two points, the first as a result of my membership of the Joint Committee. Every witness who came before us to give evidence said two things. The first was that this is an excellent Bill for which we have been waiting years. The second was that implementation will be impossible if no more money is put into the system. All our witnesses said that the current proposals for funding are totally inadequate. That is exactly what I feel in my role as a campaigner and spokesperson for carers—and this is my second point. The Bill is all that I could have dreamed of in terms of rights and recognition for carers but will come to nothing if all that results are fewer services that are harder to access, with more pressure being put on carers to do the caring. I am seeing that now in carers’ groups and organisations. They were elated when the Bill was published: now morale is plummeting for fear of what the reality may be.

I join the noble Lord, Lord Warner, in asking the Minister for chapter and verse in his call for a review. We all want the Bill to succeed but we cannot, as responsible legislators, ignore this important issue.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I should have put my name to this excellent amendment.

It would not be the first time that the OBR has looked at this issue because there is some valuable material in its report on fiscal sustainability in July 2013, to which I will return in a minute. My noble friend concentrated on how serious the problem is now and how serious it will be in 2016. Perhaps I may detain the House for a few minutes to describe the slightly further away prospect because, if we are in problems now, we shall be in crisis unless something major changes within the next eight or 10 years.

The demographic factors have been widely appreciated, most notably in the report from the Select Committee of your Lordships’ House, Ready for Ageing, which indicates that there will be 39% more people aged 85 and over by 2021 compared with 2011, and 101% more—more than double—by 2030. The Select Committee concluded that what will happen is that they will get shoved into hospital, which will be,

“contrary to their wishes, not in their best interests, and more expensive”.

That is not a very good prospect. Moreover, as the OBR has shown, there is the prospect that stays in residential care may get longer and, therefore, cost more. It calculates a variant with a 20% longer stay, which is not implausible. So, just demographically, the situation is very difficult.

However, some less noticed factors all point the same way and add to the pressures. The most prominent factor is workforce issues. Many of your Lordships will have read the excellent report produced last week by the King’s Fund. It projects that by 2025 there will be a shortage in the care sector of 1 million workers—that is 35% of the current workforce. That is assuming that the Government’s immigration policy does not bite even more sharply than we think. You have only to go into a home to see how they are kept going by caring people who have come from overseas and are willing to work for the minimum wage, or near it, to look after our older people for us. Given the Government’s policy, these people will increasingly not be available for this purpose and so wages will inevitably go up. That will be a good thing because these people are terribly underpaid for what they do—it amazes me that the services are as good as they are, not that they occasionally fall short—but the cost to the Government is very sensitive to wages: it is the main expense because around 70% of the costs of an old persons’ home are paid out in wages.

The trite response to that is, “Let productivity increase”. However, in this sector, where one person looks after another, an increase in productivity will invariably lead to a decline in the standards of service. We know this because productivity is going down—it is down 20% over the years 1997-2010—simply because we rightly expect better services for people in the homes. There is no offset available through productivity. Those are the workforce issues.

As to the related fees shortfall, the system works at the moment by local authorities paying rock-bottom prices for the care they buy and self-funders paying rather more. The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, sees this as an unfair tax but, being an economist, I know about marginal and average costs and I am therefore less shocked than I should be. However, it is a fact that it is taking place. The shortfall in fees over what will be necessary to provide an economic return for these homes would have cost local authorities £540 million in 2008-09, according to the latest published study by Laing and Buisson, to get the fees up to a level where they provide a reasonable return to the homes.

However, it will be much more difficult under the Bill’s scheme, because at the moment self-funders have no idea what the local authorities are paying for the same places that they are enjoying; they are not told. I was glad to hear the Minister confirm that under the Bill, self-funders will be told what the local authority pays. They will have to be told because the amount the local authority pays is what counts towards the cap. Thus a self-funder may be told that while they are paying £700, the local authority is only allowing £400. Your Lordships can imagine what is going to happen. I do not think that many self-funders will say, “Oh, I’ll be delighted to go on paying £700. After all, I may benefit from the cap if I live for a very long time”. They are going to be enraged. It is not a system that can be sustained. I have no doubt that the fees paid by local authorities and the fees paid by self-funders will come closer together, and that will mean increased bills for local authorities.

Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Pitkeathley and Lord Lipsey

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 89B as well as Amendment 89A, as they are both amendments about the circumstances in which a carer can be charged for services. Carers UK—I declare an interest as its vice-president—has estimated that carers save the UK economy £119 billion per year. That is a statistic that I never tire of giving your Lordships. Local authorities recognise the value and cost-effectiveness of supporting carers. As a result, very few local authorities charge for services provided to carers. The Government’s impact assessment for the Bill sets out current evidence on the cost-effectiveness of supporting carers, and refers to the benefits received from doing so: for example, preventing or delaying hospital or residential care admissions; sustaining the caring role; improving the health and well-being of carers; and, crucially, assisting carers to remain in or return to work.

The Bill includes a power to charge carers for services, and a power to charge for arranging services for carers. Given the benefits of providing support for carers, I shall argue that it would be counterproductive to charge carers and thereby reduce the take-up of support.

The current legislation under which support is provided is the Carers and Disabled Children Act 2000, which started as a Private Member’s Bill. Under the Act, services provided to a disabled person in order to meet the needs of the carer cannot include services for the disabled person that are “of an intimate nature”. It is for that reason that that same wording is used in Amendment 89A.

Interpretation varies concerning to whom, and by whom, services are provided, but the definition legally prevents carers being charged for a respite care service that includes personal care provided to the person whom the carer cares for. As I have said, very few local authorities now charge for carers services. However, given the difficulties with local authority funding, about which we hear constantly, I am concerned that more local authorities may consider charging carers in the future.

Following a recommendation by the Joint Committee scrutinising the draft Care Bill—on which I, together with several other Members of your Lordships’ House, served—the Government have sought to protect carers from being wrongly charged, by introducing the following wording in Clause 14:

“The power to make a charge under subsection (1) for meeting a carer’s needs for support under section 20 by providing care and support to the adult needing care may not be exercised so as to charge the carer”.

Although the intention of this wording is welcome, it does not provide any definition of what is a service for the carer and what is a service for the adult. So it does not prevent local authorities charging carers for services such as replacement care and other things that help them.

It is important that any potential conflict is resolved so that carers and disabled people have clarity about their personal budgets. Independent personal budgets can be useful in relation to managing options and direct payments. Whose budget is this to come out of? It will also be important when the carer count is introduced that we have clarity, so that the disabled person knows whether the cost of care is starting to accrue to their account.

Decision-making on whether services are designed to give carers a break or result in them having a break from caring is very variable at the moment. Some local carers’ services, for example, have experienced variations in approach from their local authority. I cite a particular example in which a local carers’ organisation that provides a sitting service—that is, replacement care, so that carers can take a break—operates with two neighbouring local authorities. One regards replacement care as a service for the cared-for person, including sitting services. The next-door authority allows carers to purchase a sitting service, as long as it does not include intimate care, with their direct payment. Varying interpretations mean that there is a disparity for carers in the same area. Some can access breaks, while some cannot. This creates difficulties for the service provider and for those who want to support carers.

In the current legislation, the Carers and Disabled Children Act 2000, services provided to the disabled person to meet the needs of the carer cannot include services for the disabled person that are of an intimate nature. My Amendment 89A seeks to reproduce that wording in the Bill to probe the distinction made in the Bill between carer services and services for a disabled person and to clarify how the current wording would prevent a carer being charged for respite or replacement care provided to the carer. Without a clearer definition of whose service is whose, negative consequences for the carer will inevitably result. Carers may be prevented from having a break; they may find that they are subject to charges for services that should be allocated to the disabled person; and social workers and others assessors’ time will be taken up in trying to allocate services to people.

I hope that the Minister, who I know to be totally committed to supporting carers, as are the Government, will accept this amendment to clarify the position with regard to charging carers. I beg to move.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I rise briefly—I fear that that will be the last time that I will use the word “briefly” tonight—to speak to Amendment 104ZB in my name in this group. This is another bits and pieces group; my amendment does not relate to the excellent speech just made by my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley.

Clause 64 enables a local authority to recover money owed to it in connection with the provision of care and support. A person’s failure to disclose any material fact would make them liable to recovery proceedings. However—and this is the nub—it would do so even if they had done so inadvertently. This seems terribly draconian and might well deter people from taking steps, such as asking for a direct payment, which they might perceive as carrying the risk of legal proceedings. This clause should refer only to misrepresentation, and the deliberate failure to disclose information, rather than incorporating, as it does, accidental failure.

These decisions of where to apply for help are taken at time of acute stress in many families. There may have been an incident, such as a fall or a stroke, which has changed the picture for that family entirely. At that stage, the last thing that people want to worry about is whether they have inadvertently failed to disclose some piece of information and will have legal proceedings taken as a result.

I cite an example given to me by Age UK, which was contacted by a husband whose wife has dementia. She has a private bank account that she will not let her family have access to, and discussions of financial arrangements upset her terribly, so he has not yet gained a power of attorney over her affairs. Despite knowing that his wife has assets, her husband is paying for everything relating to her care with his benefits and pensions. He feels that he could not make an accurate disclosure of her assets that would be necessary to get the benefits to which he is entitled. Imagine how that person would feel when faced with this clause and the danger that an inadvertent failure to disclose fully would lead to the local authority taking him to court.