Cost of Living: Public Well-being
Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts(2 years ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Oxford
My Lords, I welcome this moving and timely debate and the opportunity to highlight the consequences of the rising cost of living and its impact on well-being. I particularly want to focus on the well-being of children.
Psalm 41 begins with the words, “Blessed are those who consider the poor”—a reminder, if we need one, that the well-being of the whole nation is enhanced or diminished by the way we respond to those most in need. This insight is shared by all the great faith traditions.
So let us consider the poor, especially children caught in poverty and the impact of that on their well-being. The Children’s Society published its Good Childhood Report a few weeks ago. The stats have been quoted already. Some 85% of parents and carers are concerned about how the cost of living crisis will affect their families; that is nearly everybody. A third of families reported that they are already struggling with the costs of school trips and uniforms over the next year. A recent Action for Children survey report found that nearly half of children worry about their family finances—but, of course, many children’s needs are much more basic.
The diocese of Oxford has more than 280 primary and secondary schools across three counties in one of the better-off parts of the country. But heads and governors report that more and more effort is having to be invested in feeding children and other forms of social care. Our director of education tells me that many of our schools are even now having to meet basic needs through providing food parcels, giving away school uniforms, brokering support from local charities, washing school uniforms—even buying beds.
This means that time and energy are being drawn away from the primary focus of schools: to educate. Every teacher knows that it is impossible for children who are hungry to learn well. Schools report that their budgets are being squeezed through rising energy costs and rising salary costs for which they have not received extra funding. One head writes:
“The only way to break even this year will be to cut teaching and support staff, reduce educational opportunities and school visits, and keep the heating off.”
The impact on well-being for this generation of children, already affected by Covid, will be obvious.
All churches are reporting rapid escalation in food bank support and food bank use. Over the past year, I have personally visited many food banks and meals services in urban and rural areas. In 2011, one-third of churches were involved in supporting food banks. By 2016, that had risen to two-thirds. Last year, it was 80% of churches in rural and urban areas. The Trussell Trust estimates an increase in the use of food banks of 128% since 2015. I wonder: can the Government begin to imagine or plan for a time when food bank use decreases and some of our food banks go out of business, as they all want to do?
As other noble Lords have argued, the problems are deep seated. Poverty has been rising for a decade. The impact of Covid and now the cost of living crisis multiply the effect on health and well-being. We as a society should never grow used to children being hungry or families being eroded by lack of hope and an inability to meet basic needs. Many of the local support services and small charities that have sustained their communities during Covid are now overstretched. The infrastructure that has formed a safety net and contributes so much to well-being is now itself vulnerable.
I recognise the Government’s constant pledge to help the poorest, but I underline from the evidence and experience locally that the situation is getting worse, not better, and that has been the trend for many years. I repeat the call that many others have made for benefits to be increased in line with inflation; for the proper, generous funding of schools; and for co-ordinated support for charities to help the poorest. Above all, in the light of the Budget and the events of this week, I call on the Government to consider still more deeply this new and different metric, and to aim not simply for economic growth but for greater, deeper equality and fairness as a measure of society’s well-being.
As the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and others have mentioned, the research of Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson in The Spirit Level, and the stream which has flowed from that, demonstrate the connection between measures of inequality in a society and its whole well-being. The most equal societies are also the more content. Those most in need want and need to know that the Government have abandoned trickle-down economics and are applying a spirit level of fairness to the economic plans of the nation.
We need to keep alive a vision for the United Kingdom where no child is hungry; where the safety nets are robust; where child poverty is reducing; and where food banks are in decline. The well-being of the nation is now very fragile. To the incoming Prime Minister, I say, “Please don’t make it worse. Do all you can to make it better. Don’t allow the costs of the economic downturn to be borne by children and the poorest”. Blessed are those who consider the poor.
Social Care in England
Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts(3 years ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Oxford
My Lords, it is an honour to contribute to this key debate. Like others, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, for her excellent introduction. I welcome the Minister to his new responsibilities. It is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay.
One of the key texts on which so much of our human civilisation is based contains these lines:
“Honour your father and mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
The care offered by one generation to another is fundamental to human flourishing and a good society. As we have heard, that care is offered in families generously and unstintingly, but it needs to be supported by the wider community, through creative partnerships with the third sector, and by the state. These principles have led to our current system of social care, which now stands in urgent need of fresh vision and reform.
Honour is critical to both the fifth commandment and the social care system. Our vision and aspiration need to rest on giving honour and dignity to each person—regardless of age, illness or disability—and to all those who offer care, whether volunteers or paid workers. Social care is under strain and goes badly wrong when we lose this concept of the dignity of those who need and offer care.
As has been said, the initiatives taken by the Government in September and the increases in funding are modest. Caveats have been articulated, including by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle in Monday’s debate. Much more is needed. As has been said, the NAO called in March 2021 for nothing less than a
“cross-government, long-term, funded vision for care.”
I hope that this could build on a foundation of human dignity and honour, with a proper emphasis on prevention and equality. The same report calls for a workforce strategy, which, as others have argued, is urgently needed and needs to be built on the same foundation.
In the coming years, the world will face a fundamental revolution in the nature of work, with a massive increase in automation in many industries. The social care sector can benefit from the fourth industrial revolution in many ways, particularly in better systems and the use of data. It is the Government’s responsibility to offer leadership and frameworks for this. However, person-to-person care can never be delegated to machines or systems. Such delegation diminishes dignity and honour. When members of my family have needed social care, the real gift has not been the practical support, vital though that it is, but the caring touch, warm smile, sharp humour and repartee that restores the dignity of the person, even in extremes of suffering. To give this honour and dignity to others, those who work in social care and offer care voluntarily themselves need dignity, recognition and honour.
Increasing that sense of honour demands practical actions that neither public applause nor rhetorical promises alone can fully fulfil. Over the past year, on average, more than 100,000 care sector vacancies have been advertised every day. As has been said, the vacancy rate today is higher than it was before the pandemic. In the coming years, the Government will have an opportunity to develop a new social contract for social care, framed by dignity and which invests in the social caring professions in terms of standards, training, recruitment, pay and conditions. This sector will need to expand, even as jobs are lost to automation in other sectors, and will be a growing part of our economy. That social contract will need to embrace better support for voluntary carers and deeper co-ordination between the NHS and local government, as has been said.
I ask the Minister to comment in his answer to the debate on the values that will need to shape the long-term vision for social care and the place of human dignity and honour within them.
NHS: Equitable Access
Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts(6 years, 4 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Oxford
My Lords, the Question also asked about artificial intelligence. Can the Minister comment on the steps being taken to improve data transfer across different NHS trusts, and standardisation? Are steps being taken to ensure the ethical release of data for research purposes?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
I thank the right reverend Prelate for asking two very good questions. We recently announced the first local health and care records, covering around 40% of the population. Sometimes, you can pitch up in one part of the NHS and they cannot access all your patient and care data; this measure will make sure that that does not happen. Patients want this; it is essential for good direct care.
The right reverend Prelate is quite right about the ethical considerations. We will publish a code of conduct on the proper use of AI in the NHS later this year. We are working with the new Centre for Data Ethics to make sure that this happens.