Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Lord Blunkett

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 30th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, that was a very thoughtful and interesting contribution. I agreed with some of it, in particular the accolades paid to my noble friends Lord Rosser and Lord Hunt. They made such excellent speeches that I can be brief, given that many Members wish to speak today, and I have some sympathy for both Front Benches regarding the length of our sessions at the moment, not least on this Bill. However, I want to draw attention to one or two of the issues that have arisen.

Mention has been made a number of times of the Migration Advisory Committee. I heard Professor Bell on the radio yesterday making the perfectly reasonable case that, as my noble friend Lord Rosser excellently pointed out, it is important that care workers be paid more and respected more. I am fully in favour of trying to tackle head-on the understaffing, underpaying and undervaluing that currently constitutes the general attitude, despite all the sympathy often exuded towards those working in the care sector. However, Professor Bell eloquently made the point that I want to make: that you can get almost £1 an hour more working in general retail than in residential care, despite the enormous challenges arising during the Covid pandemic, as spelled out by the noble Lord, Lord Patel.

Here is a thought. I have it on the good authority of Professor Bell that, according to the Migration Advisory Committee, which concluded its main survey work in March, the consequences of the pandemic are twofold. First, yes, there will be greater unemployment, and that will be felt differently in different parts of the country and will therefore have a differential impact. I do not expect people to move for £8.70 an hour—which is the average pay in residential care, because that is the minimum wage across the country—given that they could not even afford to pay the rent; that is, if they have not been evicted by the time they get there because the moratorium has been lifted. We therefore have to have some common sense here.

There is no sign of the pay increase that should be taking place now, and the oven-ready deal promised a year ago has not yet emerged from the AGA—when it does, it will probably be grossly undercooked—so we will not have a solution. It is no good Professor Bell —I am very happy to debate him on this—going on the radio or producing a 650-page report saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice if the Government coughed up the money so that local authorities can pay increased rates?”, and that we should protect ourselves from exploitation. That is not happening. I pay tribute to the noble Lord who has just drawn attention to what I said in Committee about private equity investment in this area.

My noble friend Lord Hunt made the important point that there will be a cut-off point in three months’ time. Yes, of course we should be emphasising this and supporting people to take up jobs in social care. We should be training them properly and giving them a career pathway so that they can see the way ahead. Their career pathway is somewhat blocked at the moment by the fact that, the higher up you go, the more likely the Government are to allow someone from outside the country to come in and take the job. I tried to explain that on a previous occasion, but I do not think I was eloquent enough. I will use this example: you can come in and drive a BMW but you cannot come in to drive an elderly Robin Reliant that has rusted to the point where the brakes do not work and the doors are falling off. That is what happened in social care, as illustrated by the noble Lord, Lord Patel. There is death and fear within the sector. You will not cure that in three months, nor persuade other people to move house to take up jobs because they have just been made redundant from quite well-paid employment in areas where they hope to take up training and other opportunities.

I therefore appeal for everybody, including the Migration Advisory Committee, to get real. I appeal to the Minister to go back to government—it is not her fault but that of the Treasury—and say, “In the next three months, we as a Government will not solve this problem. We will not be able to encourage sufficient people to take up these jobs. We know that the turnover rate is massive”—it is even greater than my noble friend Lord Rosser said—“that the vacancies exist and are unattractive, and that some people will be highly unsuitable.” So, for goodness sake, let us have a continuing review. That is all Amendment 3 asks for: to get this right and ensure that the consequences of closing the door to the other 27 members of the European Union on 31 December do not have a disproportionate impact on the care of those we are supposed to care about. This is why this debate is taking place, because of the new situation arising from the way we are treating those from the European Union and the EAA. Were that not to happen, we could have a more rational debate, as appealed for by the previous speaker, on how we adjust to ensure that we are not reliant in key areas —including, apparently, butchery—on drawing in people from across the world. That includes, of course, doctors and nurses, who, under the programme that has been laid out, will be allowed to be recruited into the country.

There are such contradictions and we are in such a cliff-edge position that I have gone on longer than I intended, because the more I think about it, the more passionate I am to ask for a bit of common sense.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of Amendment 3. Personally, I have quite a lot of sympathy with Amendment 30, put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, which she referred to as “tougher and more radical”. I voted to remain in the European Union precisely because I recognise the importance of free movement of people. I agreed with virtually every word said by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and I shall be brief, because I am aware that we are only on group 2 and the target is to get to group 14 this evening.

The social care system is in crisis. All noble Lords who have spoken have referred to the difficulties that it faces—problems that have been made clear by your Lordships’ Economic Affairs Committee over the years. The Minister should not have to answer for the social care system. She is not the Minister for Social Care; she is Minister of State in the Home Office. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, is right: the equivalent of the Migration Advisory Committee should report to not just the Home Office but to the Department for Education, the department of health, the Treasury and BEIS because they all need to understand the skills deficits in this country.

The specifics of Amendment 3 are about the social care sector. This Bill is in front of us today because of Brexit but the social care sector is highlighted because of the Covid crisis. Today’s amendment would have been necessary even without six months of a global pandemic, but that pandemic has made clear to everybody both the importance of social care and the huge numbers of EU and third-country nationals in this country looking after some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

It cannot be right to say that those people should not be here and should not be working. We value people being here. Although the noble Lord, Lord Horam, is undoubtedly correct that we need to ensure that British people are adequately skilled, can we really assume that we will suddenly go in the next 14 weeks from no training to saying that someone who is unemployed can take on a job in the care sector that is being vacated by an EU national who has gone home and will not be replaced by another EU national? There might be medium and long-term aspirations for change, but we must accept that the change on 1 January will be immediate.

For that reason, I ask the Government to take this modest amendment very seriously. In her letter to noble Lords earlier today, the Minister referred to Amendments 3 and 30. She stressed that the MAC is a “world-class, independent body” and that it will report. Well, it reported yesterday and expressed its concern about the social care sector. If she cannot give us an answer today, will she come back before Third Reading with some recommendation of how she plans to reconcile her letter to your Lordships, the MAC’s report and the importance of ensuring that, on 1 January, the social care system is not even more vulnerable than it is already? I strongly support Amendment 3.