Care Bill [HL]

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of my noble friend’s Amendment 92ZFC because it applies to people with learning disabilities—particularly people with mild or moderate learning disabilities who may not meet the eligibility criteria for care and support in a situation where someone has befriended a person with a learning disability, moved in with them and concerns have been raised by neighbours that the person may be being abused. This is not about family carers; it is a mate crime. It is the sort of crime of which Steven Hoskin was a victim. He was subsequently murdered. Somebody moves in, and the local authority is unable to speak to the adult with a learning disability to check whether they are okay because the other person always answers the door and will not let anybody in. This power of access would change that, and I support my noble friend.

[Baroness Wheeler]

My Lords, when the Committee considered the Clause 2 duty on preventing needs for care and support, the noble Lord, Lord Rix—who I am sorry cannot be in his place today—put forward a strong case for ensuring that safeguarding is explicit in the Bill alongside the other duties of prevention relating to adults and carers. We gave strong support to that. The focus on safeguarding vulnerable adults should not just be on protection once abuse or neglect has taken place. Local authorities, and agencies on their behalf, should also be obliged and guided proactively to prevent abuse occurring in the first place.

We welcome placing safeguarding on a statutory footing in the Bill and the establishment of statutory safeguarding adults boards. This builds on legislation, regulations and advice on principles and frameworks for safeguarding adults and children that Labour established up to 2009 and which the Government are taking forward in the Bill. We were, however, always cautious about bringing adult and children’s safeguarding together under one structure as some councils have done. Adult and children’s safeguarding issues are not the same, and I would be grateful if the Minister will comment on the Government’s approach to this in future.

The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rix, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, include important issues which we support to ensure that safeguarding is properly identified, reported and investigated in all health and social care settings, not just social care, which is particularly important in the light of the appalling neglect and abuse that happened to people with learning difficulties at Winterbourne View. In this vein, the intention behind Amendment 92ZF to place a duty on providers or other relevant partners of the local authority to report when they suspect an adult is at risk of experiencing abuse or neglect is also important, as local authorities will not be able to identify all situations where people are at risk.

We also support the need to ensure that an adult has access to support and advocacy during a safeguarding investigation; the need to specify in the Bill areas of abuse, as set out in the No Secrets guidance, in addition to the reference to financial abuse; and the need for abuse to be recognised as abuse whether it is perpetrated as the result of deliberate intent, negligence or ignorance. These are all strong areas of concern expressed by noble Lords today and by key stakeholders. I also underline the vital need, when so much care is now contracted out and provided by the independent, private and voluntary sectors, to ensure that safeguarding is built into procurement and contract management in health and social care. Will the Minister inform the Committee how the Government intend to ensure this happens?

Amendment 92ZFC, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, puts forward a comprehensive case for the power of access by a third party to private premises if they suspect that a vulnerable adult is being abused. As the Government’s recent consultation response on this issue shows, there is both strong support and strong opposition among local authorities, NHS trusts, the health and social care professions and patients and user organisations on this sensitive and complex issue, although we have to remember that the consultation response was relatively low in terms of local authority and NHS trust participation and that many of the responses appeared not to have fully understood the proposed limitation of the power to situations where the third party is denying access, not the individual.

It is clear that there is a significant gap in the current legislation for dealing with third-party denial of access to some of the most vulnerable adults—women subject to abuse by violent partners or a person with a learning disability being bullied by a friend who has moved into their home—which the Bill needs to take the opportunity to address. The noble Baroness’s amendment is strongly supported by, among others, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the College of Social Work, Mencap and Age UK, and sets out a tight framework and the limitations and restrictions that would apply. Local authorities would have to apply to the courts and demonstrate reasonable cause for suspecting that someone is in danger of abuse. The Equality and Human Rights Commission argues, as have noble Lords, that alongside the proposed duty of local authorities to make inquiries set out in Amendment 92ZFD, the power of access will enable more intervention in response to allegations or suspicions of abuse or neglect and get the balance right, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said. The critical point of the power of access is to enable the local authority to access the person and speak to them alone to assess the situation. It is not about entering someone’s house for no good reason. It is a last-resort power and is by no means presented as a solution in itself.

On balance, we support the case for inclusion in the Bill of the power of access by a social worker and the police where there is a danger of third-party abuse. Our work on safeguarding when we were in government, especially in relation to children, makes us sympathetic to the approach in the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. However, we of course recognise the strong concerns of Mind on this issue and of the Royal College of General Practitioners, which would prefer the use of other options, such as working with the sector to coproduce best-practice guidelines. Will the Minister explain to the Committee how the Government propose to address that denial of access by a third party to a potentially vulnerable adult without dealing with this issue in the Bill?

The issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Low, in his Amendment 92AA on the need to clarify the application of the Human Rights Act to regulated care services are familiar to the House, as we thoroughly debated and aired similar grounds during the passage of the Health and Social Care Act. There are now concerns that amendments to that Act and the National Assistance Act in the Care Bill have set the clock back on the application of the HRA to private and voluntary sector residential care home providers. The noble Lord, Lord Low, has set out these concerns clearly, this time powerfully supported by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to the pleas from noble Lords to think again on this matter.