Disabled People: Personal Assistants

Debate between Lord Kamall and Lord Polak

Wednesday 7th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The Government have been committed to ensuring that there is equality for disabled people, including plenty of initiatives in other sectors—transport, building new homes and offices, and retrofitting—but the issue of personal assistance is a particularly difficult one in the context of social care having been treated as a Cinderella service for years. Some of the initiatives that we are putting in place, such as the proper qualifications and recruitment from overseas, sadly do not yet apply to personal assistants because of the rules. We are looking at those barriers and hopefully will be able to tackle them.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I am a member of the Adult Social Care Committee in your Lordships’ House, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. We are looking at the invisibility of the unpaid carer, but it was timely that yesterday we went to Real, a charity in Tower Hamlets. It was a humbling and educational experience in which the difficulties and issues within the social care system for disabled people were brought to us. The difficulty of accessing PAs was very clear. My noble friend the Minister highlighted the problem in one of his answers. He said that maybe we need go to DWP or maybe we need it to be here. It needs to be coherent. To help those people, it needs to be one person, one Minister, one department dealing with this matter.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend makes a very important point. I have found this to be the case with a number of initiatives that I have been working on in my department. Quite often, I will have a joint meeting on an issue—with someone from BEIS, for example—and I then realise that they have to go and talk to someone else outside of the room. When I have been involved in such initiatives, I have always insisted that whoever else across government has a role or interest in them is in the room with us. This is clearly another example of what should be happening. It should be jointly DHSC and DWP. Rather than thinking about whose responsibility it is, we should work together to find a common solution.

Defibrillators

Debate between Lord Kamall and Lord Polak

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

If noble Lords will excuse the pun, one of the heartening things in answering this is that, when I received briefing on this, it is really important and interesting how we are working across government. It is not only in the Department of Health; we are working with the Department for Transport on transport locations, DCMS on sports grounds, the Department for Education on education settings and other departments. This is really a cross-government initiative.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I was privileged to be at a meeting with Jamie Carragher and Mark King of the Oliver King Foundation and Secretary of State Nadhim Zahawi only a few weeks ago. At that meeting with some senior civil servants, he more than indicated that the Department for Education would be very keen to ensure that defibrillators will be in every single school and will not be waiting for the rebuild that has been mentioned. I urge the Minister to go back to the Department for Education and ensure that this happens. The Oliver King Foundation was founded because Mark King’s son, Oliver, passed away at 11 or 12 at a swimming baths in my old school in Liverpool because there was no defibrillator. The point about sports places is right. Can he go back to the Department for Education, get this commitment which I have heard with my own ears and make sure that every school has a defibrillator as soon as possible?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. I know he has a long-term interest in this area. Of course I will go back to my department and talk about this. The important thing is making sure that we have more locations, that there is awareness and that people are educated in how to use defibrillators and in wider CPR.