Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Wheeler and Lord Ramsbotham

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Patel, because I agree that this is an extremely worrying issue. Focusing on prisons, there is an increasing number of elderly prisoners, as has been reported, and it is quite clear that the prison medical authorities are not capable of looking after all their needs. For example, people have talked about dementia and other problems of increasing age, and it is of concern that those people are not being properly looked after.

I am also very concerned about the use of the words “probation trusts” because they are about to go. According to the Transforming Rehabilitation agenda, which the Ministry of Justice has released, they are to be replaced by directors of rehabilitation in various parts of the country and/or private companies acting as rehabilitation companies responsible for services. What we do not know from the Ministry of Justice is exactly how many people are to stay with the existing probation service, which has been given a lot of responsibilities that do not include running probation hostels, which is currently a probation responsibility. Nor have I seen any mention of this accommodation in the transforming rehabilitation agenda that has been produced. Therefore, this matter needs following up. Within a year would be a very useful timeframe, because it would allow a follow-up of what is happening in the Ministry of Justice to be conducted.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, from what my noble friend Lord Patel has said, it is clear that the issue of safeguarding inquiries is not at all sorted. He has highlighted a substantial gap in the Bill that could have a very serious impact on some of the most vulnerable people in our communities and prisons. He rightly seeks equivalence of care and protection for adults detained in prison and those residing in approved premises such as bail hostels—care and protection that all other vulnerable adults have when it comes to safeguarding inquiries by local authorities. We take on board his deep concerns about prisons and what appears to be a lack of co-ordinated and clear responsibilities in respect of safeguarding inquiries. I ask the Minister to look further into the matter, as my noble friend suggested.

My noble friend raises some key issues on whose responsibility it is to carry out a safeguarding inquiry for adults living in the community in approved premises. Given all the uncertainty about future service delivery as a result of the Government’s major reorganisation and break-up of the probation service, if that responsibility is currently with the local probation trust, this amendment, which calls on the Secretary of State to report to Parliament within one year of this clause of the Bill coming into force, becomes even more necessary. To require the new community rehabilitation companies or their successor bodies to account for how they have discharged their responsibilities for safeguarding adults residing in approved premises is an acceptable way forward.

I look forward to hearing from the Government about how they intend to deal with the matter in the light of the serious concerns expressed by my noble friend today and in previous discussions on the Bill, and in light of the huge confusion that will result from the proposed changes to the probation service. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to support my noble friend’s endeavours to fill what is potentially a serious gap in the Bill, and to ensure future adequate protection of these vulnerable adults.

Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Wheeler and Lord Ramsbotham

Monday 29th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on Amendments 105AA and 105CA, and will comment on government Amendments 105B to 105D. I do so as a former Chief Inspector of Prisons who was closely involved with safeguarding inspections of children, which we were able to carry out thanks to there being a social care inspectorate in position at the time. The inspections were joint in that they covered a number of inspectorates, not just the Commission for Social Care Inspection. At the same time, I was conducting a thematic review of the treatment of the elderly in prison, who were causing intense concern. Unfortunately, at that time the social services that were responsible for the elderly in the country did not function in prisons. I had hoped for the adoption of what I understand the Government now intend to do: to make the social services responsible for the oversight of the elderly in prisons. In speaking to these amendments, I am conscious that the Government are almost there, but not quite.

I wonder, too, whether the Ministry of Justice actually consults with other ministries about Bills that affect prisoners. We are about to start the Committee stage of the Children and Families Bill. We have to try to remove a clause that prevents young offenders being subject to the pathways for those with special educational needs. Prisons are allegedly to be excluded. Only last Wednesday, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, raised a question about jobseeker’s allowance and prisoners not having access to benefits in time. I wonder whether the clause not applying to prisoners was discussed or whether the Ministry of Justice has come to a view on something that will affect an increasing number of people in the prisons: the elderly.

There is an extreme need for local social services to be involved in prisons by statute and by right. With due respect to the Ministry of Justice and the Prison Service, when I listen to the Minister saying that “it will be left to the prisons” and that it “should” be statutory, or that they “can” invite members of safeguarding adults boards into prisons, I do not think that that is good enough. The track record, if you go into prisons over the years, is that it is not good enough.

The other thing is that people are simply not trained enough to be able to conduct the care that is so essential for the elderly element of the prison population. There are many concerns over the fact that too many staff have simply no idea about problems to do with dementia, which is but one of the issues. To phrase this provision loosely and say that somebody from a prison “may” be a member of the board is not good enough. It really should be laid down in statute that somebody must be a member. If it is not the governor, it must be someone from the senior prison management team. The other reason it must be a member of the senior management team is that people change. There is such movement in the staff of a prison that if you are not careful, you will not have somebody who knows what they are doing and knows the people in the local authority to contact if there is a problem with somebody who needs care. It is important to have it statutorily laid down not just for somebody to be responsible within the prison, but so that those who are responsible for delivering support and care know precisely who to make contact with. It is no good leaving it nebulous by just going to the prison and finding somebody. If you do that, you will find that the “somebody” is not there. I believe very firmly that someone should be made responsible and accountable for this.

I welcome the fact that prison officers and prison custody officers may be members of the boards, and mention has been made of the work done by HM Inspectorate of Prisons. That is fine, but only goes half way. I hope that the Care Quality Commission will conduct inspections of the safeguarding of adults in prison. The commission would use the other inspectorates, which will have something to contribute to that. As was done with the safeguarding of children inspections, they would be joint and not merely limited to one part. I very much hope that the Government will carefully reconsider these amendments, perhaps in consultation with the Ministry of Justice—which, I would hope, would have objected to these two clauses anyway.

[Baroness Wheeler]

My Lords, this is largely a group of government technical amendments, interspersed with amendments from noble Lords probing important aspects. On Clause 69, my noble friend Lord Patel’s Amendments 105AA and 105CA would ensure that local authority safeguarding inquiries do apply to adults in bail accommodation and, in respect of Safeguarding Adults Boards, would enable prison governors or other prison staff to be members of the board.

Government Amendments 105B and 105D address those issues. On safeguarding inquiries, the Government’s proposal to allow SABs to provide advice and assistance to persons in bail accommodation is a compromise. My noble friend has argued that that is not good enough and we strongly support that view. How can local authorities have premises in their areas where abuse or neglect could occur and not have a duty to conduct a safeguarding inquiry?

On prison governors being members of Safeguarding Adults Boards, my noble friend is exploring ways in which governors and prison staff can best participate in and learn about the board’s role and work. I look forward to the Minister’s response on how she thinks the Government’s amendments best facilitate this.

The remaining Clause 69 government amendments include a number of tidying-up measures which we support to reduce the burden on local authorities, such as clarifying local authority ordinary residence rules in relation to bail accommodation, explicitly exempting prisons and bail accommodation from local authority safeguarding adults reviews, and minor technical amendments to change the general language relating to the clause.

Under Clause 71 and Amendment 105Q from the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, we return again to the Secretary of State’s powers in relation to local authorities and NHS bodies. Both the noble Baroness and my noble friend Lord Touhig make a strong case for statutory guidance previously in place to continue to apply under the new legislation until the Secretary of State declares otherwise. The noble Lord and noble Baroness, as usual, speak strongly on autism and the Autism Act being embedded in the new legislation. However, there is a wider issue of ensuring that the Secretary of State retains ultimate responsibility, arguably more important than ever with the tendency of our current Secretary of State to hover above it all and act as if everybody else is responsible but him.

Amendment 105R of the noble Lord, Lord Low, to Clause 72 seeks to prevent a local authority from being able to delegate functions on its behalf under this part of the Bill. He is right to be cautious about how the local authority powers under this clause are used. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the amendment.

Finally, under government Amendment 105V in this group, I again raise an issue that I spoke of during last week’s safeguarding debate on the provider failure provisions under Clauses 47 to 49, designed to address responsibilities and actions in any future provider collapse, such as we saw most recently with Southern Cross residential care homes. The Lords Delegated Powers Committee expressed concern at the Bill’s failure to define what is meant by both “business failure” and “market failure”. Although I got an answer in passing in the following debate when the noble Earl the Minister responded to a question about provider failure from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, I would appreciate the Minister explaining today in more detail why the Government have chosen regulations to address these two issues, which are fundamental to the operation of the provider failure provisions of the Bill, rather than include the definitions in the Bill.