Home Care Workers

Debate between Baroness Wheeler and Lord Henley

Monday 28th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, we are dealing with the pay of individuals and the travel costs between the two visits. I have tried to set out what the law is, and I think that it is perfectly clear. On funding for local authorities, it is for them to decide how to deal with it. The Government have given councils access to £3.6 billion extra funding for adult social care in 2018-19 and £3.9 billion in 2019-20.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, this is predominantly a female workforce, often employed under precarious employment conditions—on zero-hours contracts without any guarantee of the number of hours worked or available each week. The Resolution Foundation estimates that care workers are collectively cheated out of £130 million each year. Age UK says that we will need 650,000 extra care workers for the future. We know that we need 130,000 care workers just to meet today’s demand. Does the Minister agree that giving care workers a decent living wage for all the time spent on the job is not only fair but vital to recruiting new staff and addressing current and future chronic staff shortages? If he does, what is he going to do about it?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, we believe it is vital that they are paid properly and that is why we gave advice to local authorities on how they should perform their duties. I repeated that advice on what local authorities should do to the noble Lord, Lord Wills. We have also made funding available to local authorities, so it should be for them to ensure that they have the right people to do the job.