Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Tyler of Enfield and Baroness Bakewell

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

I rise to support this amendment as I think the House would expect me to because I put forward a similar amendment during the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill.

So here we are again. Time rolls on. I want to refer to the annual report I wrote in 2008-09 about the job I had as the Voice of Older People. I wrote that the job had proved a bombshell. Within hours of the announcement being made responses began. Letters, encounters, meetings and seminars showed me the range of cares particular to older people. At that time equality was my agenda and the issues were about the promotion of things such as equality in retirement, pensions and equal pay. However, concerns rapidly expanded. In no time at all I was being inundated with dilemmas about care homes, housing, rent levels and public loos. Expatriates were writing to me about claiming their pensions. End-of-life treatment was on the agenda again.

This agenda has not gone away. It is growing and it will go on doing so. We will hear tomorrow about the implications of the demographic and right now we are awaiting the ramifications of the Dilnot report. There is a campaign to get older people online, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox. There are concerns about fuel prices. I have recently read that E.ON, with which I have a special deal for a limited price because I am old, is withdrawing that favour from older people. Why? Breast cancer is very much on the agenda for older people. The risk improves the older you get but it does not reduce after 70 or 75. It goes on being a killer and becomes more seriously so.

Which Bill that will come before the House can encompass this vast agenda of the entire population that is growing old? This is a very difficult problem for the matter of law. We need a commissioner who can embrace housing, pensions, health, welfare and money. We need someone who can listen. The main thing about a commissioner is that they are not the spokesman for the established government—they are about us. They speak to government about what it is we want, what it is we would like, and on what we need guidance. The agenda is huge.

I am well aware that there is a multitude of charitable organisations that deal with all sorts of this fragmented agenda. I pay particular tribute to Age UK which is very, very strong in dealing with these issues, but what we need is for our complaints to be funnelled through an individual who belongs on the side of the old, who addresses the rest of the community about all these issues. I know that the Minister knows that the agenda is a wide one. What we need to know is where we can place this need—on which Bill and in which House? I support the amendment.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

I rise very briefly to explain why I added my name to this amendment. I feel strongly that older people need their own advocate and it needs to be someone with real clout and real powers. The experience of the children’s commissioner to which my noble friend Lady Barker has already referred is very relevant here. I was a civil servant in Whitehall for a long time. There were many different departments dealing with different aspects of children’s policy but no one was joining it all up. When the children’s commissioner came on the scene, the commissioner became a strong advocate of the cause of children and young people across the UK and caused Whitehall and government to respond in a different, more joined-up way.

I had the honour to be a member of the Select Committee that produced the Ready for Ageing? report. I very much look forward to the debate on that tomorrow. During its production, I learnt so much about the contribution that older people are making to society. To cite three quick figures: one in three working mothers relies on grandparents for childcare; 65% of older people support their older neighbours; the value of informal care provided by older people has been assessed to be £34 billion, and so many volunteers are older people. We do not hear about that. What do we hear about in the press? We hear about older people who are a terrible burden because they are consuming so much of scarce national resources. We hear about the graph of doom. It all sounds like a looming catastrophe. We do not hear about the incredibly valuable contribution that older people are making.

That is why I believe that older people need an advocate. Yes, it is to champion the great needs of an ageing society in public policy-making in central and local government; but it is also someone who can represent them, who understands their needs and can celebrate their values and achievements and, I hope, turn around the whole narrative that we have in this country about older people.