Brexit: Health and Social Care Workforce

Debate between Baroness Verma and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for the opportunity to say that we value every person who works in this country in those professions. We want to ensure that they are able to stay and contribute to the health and wealth of our country. I point out we are improving both recruitment and retention not only through increases in the living wage but through changes to the Agenda for Change pay deal concluded earlier this year. It will give 1 million staff at least a 3% pay increase by the end of 2018-19, and increase the starting salary of a nurse by nearly 10% to almost £25,000 by 2021.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, we all value the increased living wage—I speak as a provider of social care, and my interests are listed in the register. Will the Government ring fence the extra funding that they rightly put into social care, so that local authorities have to pass it on to providers? Providers have increased costs, and we cannot pass the money on to our care workers because we simply cannot afford it.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I recognise the picture that my noble friend paints. It is of course incredibly important that money gets to the front line. I am sure that she is aware of this, but I would point out the operation of the Better Care Fund, which brings together local authority and NHS funding specifically to support social care provision. The amounts of money going through that have been increasing over recent years.

Social Care

Debate between Baroness Verma and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Thursday 7th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I can absolutely provide that reassurance on the voluntary sector. The noble Baroness is quite right to highlight the vital role it plays—it is essential and critical to this sector. On falls, she will know just how important reducing falls is. The disabled facilities grant is increasing. It is not a well-known bit of government spending and not talked about much, but it amounts to about half a billion pounds a year. It can have a really big impact by keeping people in their homes for up to four years longer, reducing falls by 40%. It is something we have had the opportunity to discuss in this House recently. It is critical. She is quite right to focus on the frontier between health and social care and making sure that it flows and works well.

On child carers, I will write with more details about what the action plan covers, but clearly we will make sure that it looks at all carers, because a carer could be of almost any age. As she pointed out, it includes very young children as well as people in their 80s and 90s. A true carers approach would encompass all of them.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for the Statement. I refer to my registered interests. I will ask my noble friend about two issues. The first is respite care, which seems too often to be missed, particularly when there are reduced services. Services have been cut back for many service users. When family members have to manage the burden we need to have some discussions on extra respite support. Secondly—I am a broken record on this—we need seriously to look at the value we put on paying care workers a proper return on the work they do, given the extra responsibilities being put on them all the time.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I am grateful to my noble friend for raising both those points. She is quite right about respite care. Local authorities have a duty to provide it, but I also note that there is pressure on the system. Indeed, the issue of one particular respite home, Nascot Lawn, has been raised. It is something I am interested in and I am looking at it. I will take that point away. We are trying to look at the care service in the round, so respite care must be part of that.

My noble friend is right about paying care workers properly. We have increased the national minimum wage, now moving on to the national living wage, precisely to provide a proper recompense for people who work in that sector and, critically, to start to provide a proper career structure so that people can move on, add to their skills and progress while staying in the caring profession.

Adult Social Care in England

Debate between Baroness Verma and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I agree in part with what the noble Baroness said in the sense that demographic change represents a big challenge. She mentioned the over-100s. The population of over-85s will double between now and 2037. As the CQC report makes clear, many of those people will have difficulty with the basic behaviours and actions they need to be able to live independently. That is the big challenge that we face. The report provides a very honest exposure of strengths and weaknesses in the current system. The strengths are there, though the noble Baroness perhaps did not give them as much credit as they deserve. The report says:

“Overall, the quality of care remains relatively stable, with the majority of all care rated as good and improvements in some services”.


Indeed, only 1% of services are rated inadequate. Clearly we want that percentage to be zero but it is better than in other sectors. I do not disagree with the noble Baroness about the demographic challenges we face. As I said in my first Answer, we are trying to put more funding in, to recruit more staff and raise quality now that we have this national threshold. We hope to decrease variation and then look for a long-term solution that will solve this problem that we have all been wandering around for the last 20 years.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, as a care provider for the last 17 years I say humbly to my noble friend that we need to pay care staff a proper wage so that they can actually have a life that is not just about existing. I am told constantly that local councils are being given extra funding. It is not trickling down to the providers and there needs to be a really serious look at the level of funding and at what we are entitled to pay care staff, because with Brexit around the corner we are going to need ever more of our own homegrown talent to provide those places.