Social Care Strategy

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest, as a member of my family is a full-time unpaid carer. I suspect that many of us have unpaid carers in our families and, if we have not got them yet, we are likely to have them in future.

We have had a plethora of reports, an avalanche of committees and this, that and the other on this subject. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, on initiating this debate. Why do not the Government simply take this debate—and have no more committees—and act on it? That seems to me simpler than having yet another committee, which will take time.

I hope that we will eventually get to a national care service. I am reasonably confident that this Government are going to do something about it and that we will have no more debates asking whether the Government will do this; next time, my noble friend will come to us and tell us, “This is the start that the Government have made on dealing with the problem”. That is the least that we expect of my noble friend, and I hope that she will do it.

I shall say one quick word about professional carers—and in my family I also have experience of those. If any Member of this House has seen the local authority forms that one has to fill in to qualify for care, they will know that they require two PhDs and a couple of lawyers to fill in. It is a nightmare. Could we please simplify the bureaucracy? It is not fair on those who do not have the legal background. My daughter helped somebody in my family, because she is a lawyer, but it is not fair that there should be such enormous difficulties. And of course even paid carers tend not to turn up for Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Some unpaid carers are full time. It is not just about those who are working and losing money through the bureaucracy; some of them are full time, and they do not end up with any pension at all because they have had to give up their jobs to get £81.90 a week—I think that is the amount. We are talking about something between 5 million and 10 million such people. We do not know how many unpaid carers are full time and how many have given up their jobs. It is pretty expensive having a disabled person at home, as it requires more heating and one has to use more people for repairs. It is a costly business to have a person who requires care in the house.

If there is to be one single change on behalf of full-time unpaid carers, it should be to provide them with respite care. The ones I know are desperately up against it; they just need a break—otherwise, they cannot continue. We are not talking about 35 hours a week for them; we are talking getting on for about 150 hours a week. They are full time, and they have to be there and ready at night, in case there is a need for help. We should give unpaid carers some respite care; that is what they need. If we can come away with that alone, it would make such a big change to the lives of at least some of them. A bit of respite care every few years is not enough of a break from the onerous responsibility of caring.

Let me give an example. I know of one carer and the person she was looking after had a catheter, which got blocked, and on that occasion the nurse could not clear it. It required a visit to hospital. I mentioned this to my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, as she knows about it. The result was that the ambulance came but could not take the patient to the hospital where the consultant looking after him was. It took him to another hospital, but that was no good. The unpaid carer would have had to get a car, but could not park anywhere near UCH, so had to pay for taxis. It is a cumbersome extra burden that should not be necessary.

Finally, there is one council that still provides unpaid adult social care: Hammersmith. Noble Lords should have a look at what it is doing and at why it is so successful.