Elderly People: Abuse

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, who many years ago first alerted the nation to the problem of abuse of older people. It is fantastic that she is here battling away on that most important issue.

I acknowledge that we have made progress in recent years, with the changes in the Care Bill—perhaps not as much as we wanted but definite progress—strengthening the CQC regulatory framework and the requirement for local authorities to submit returns on incidents of abuse of vulnerable adults. What will happen when those returns come to the Health and Social Care Information Centre? Can one then expect that to form the basis of government policy changes?

I turn to the question of regulation, which the noble Baroness raised. The noble Earl and I have argued about the regulation of care workers; we will not solve that this afternoon. The noble Baroness also raised the question of the Law Commission’s work. Until a few weeks ago, we fully expected, in the fifth year of this Parliament, to have a Bill from the Government. It became known among the regulatory bodies that in fact the Government were not now going to produce a proper Bill but were going to produce a draft Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny. There is another rumour that the Government are not even going to bring a draft Bill in the next Session. I do not think that it needs a draft Bill. It is quite clear that the work undertaken by the Law Commission is perfectly ready for a Bill to be prepared and put into the Queen’s Speech.

The great danger—this is the main point I want to make—is that if we do not have a proper Bill, I should have thought that there is absolutely no chance of a Government in 2015 bringing forward a substantive Bill in the first two terms, so it could be quite a long time before we get a substantive Bill. The noble Earl’s department is doing no work on the Section 60 orders that we currently use. There could be incredible blight among the regulatory bodies unless the Government begin to get a grip. Of course, the noble Earl will not respond to me on this point, but even at this late stage, I would hope that the Government would reconsider why we cannot have a substantive Bill in the next Session.

On financial abuse, is the noble Earl ready to say a little more about what we can do about the abuse of the power of attorney and the point raised by my noble friend Lord Wills on cold callers?

I also ask the noble Earl about the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Mawson. It seems to me that one reason for the lack of co-ordination between agencies is the normal organisational resistance to working together. The second is obviously cost shifting between different bodies, which we know happens at local level. Does the noble Earl agree that a third reason is that people are being very defensive? The reason for filling the forms in is not for the benefit of the older person; it is to prove, when an inquiry happens, when an investigation takes place, that the staff have done what is right. What will the Government do to move away from the current blame culture into one in which staff are encouraged to work together, not just fill in these ridiculous forms, which are no good to anyone?