Social Care

Lord Bradley Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradley (Lab)]

My Lords, as another member of the Adult Social Care Committee and declaring my interests in the register, I am pleased to make a short contribution to this very important debate. I too congratulate my noble friend Lady Andrews on securing this debate and, more importantly, I praise her knowledgeable and passionate chairing of the committee and her opening speech today, which I fully endorse.

The evidence we received throughout our inquiry was for recognition and support for social care in general and unpaid carers in particular, as a largely hidden workforce. The evidence was compelling, inspiring but also at times harrowing, and I praise all the contributors. As the committee stated at the beginning of our report:

“Creating a sustainable social care system in which people, their families and friends can thrive is a national imperative”.


A sustainable adult social care service must be seen as

“an indispensable partner to the health service”

and clearly and genuinely integrated with it. Surely no one can disagree with that. As we further noted, the new integrated care boards and systems must be at the forefront of realising this ambition.

As we have heard, to achieve it, investment and resources must be forthcoming. Again, the committee made clear that the Government must increase the financial settlement for adult social care over three years and then commit to sustaining realistic, long-term and protected funding for the sector to enable the robust planning of services. So it was clearly disappointing that there was no mention of sustained funding in the Budget, or any recognition of the need to reform the social care funding system based on the laudable principles established by the Dilnot inquiry.

Linked to this funding settlement is, as we have heard, access to the key benefit for carers—carer’s allowance. It is the lowest benefit rate of its kind—I do not apologise for repeating that—and it is not reflective of the extraordinary value of unpaid carers, as we have already heard today. Some of the most shocking evidence we heard from unpaid carers was about families’ lives being suddenly and unexpectedly overturned by some catastrophic event, perhaps a critical or terminal illness or a life-changing accident, with their immediate income and long-term financial planning in absolute turmoil.

So access to carer’s allowance must immediately be made easier by lowering the threshold of carers’ hours and ensuring that the earnings limit is uprated in line with the national living wage and in law. Further, the DWP should fundamentally review the carer’s allowance and report back to Parliament within one year to give some hope of financial support for this army of unpaid carers—I would be very grateful for the Government’s views on that today.

Touching very briefly on workforce, we wait expectantly for the Government’s social care plan and the workforce proposals within it. The current situation of low pay, limited career opportunity and thousands of vacancies in the sector is an utter disgrace. The committee’s recommendation that the Government must produce, with people who work in and draw on adult social care, a comprehensive, long-term, national workforce and skills plan, is an absolute priority.

Finally, it is essential that a laser focus is maintained on adult social care, and particularly on the incredible work and dedication of unpaid carers. To this end, the committee strongly believes in the establishment in the next 12 months of a commissioner for care and support to act as a champion for older adults, disabled people and unpaid carers. Critical early priorities for such a commissioner would be to include oversight of a government-commissioned, independent public review of the Care Act 2014, working with local authorities to ensure that the Act is fully implemented, and also to set up, as we have heard, the identification of the millions of invisible unpaid carers, perhaps through NHS patient records—with their permission—to ensure a mechanism to provide carers with information, self-care and digital resources to support them. They deserve nothing less.