Covid-19: Social Care Services

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of Cumbria County Council. I take as my text my noble friend Lady Wheeler’s excellent opening speech, where she emphasised that the Covid crisis has brought the social care crisis to the fore. To use a phrase that we are unfortunately hearing too much at the moment, the social care sector has suffered from a lot of pre-existing conditions that have sadly weakened it. It was not ring-fenced from austerity to the extent that the National Health Service was in the last decade. Recently, we have had the sticking plaster of the social care precept on council tax, but that is very inadequate. We face a rapidly ageing demographic.

I will focus on the sector’s structural problems—the fact that many of the providers of social care are on the edge of bankruptcy and that the sector has seen widespread financialisation as big companies and private equity groups have moved in. Providers have been loaded up with debt and the margin of profitability is very low. Property has been sold off at high prices because of promises of high rentals that are probably now unsustainable. It is a sector in deep crisis, particularly where there is private ownership. We have to tackle this problem.

Part of the problem is the lack of long-term stable funding for social care. It was a mistake not to go ahead with the Dilnot recommendations. In the general election, Boris Johnson promised us action in months on stable funding for social care. This crisis should be a reason to bring that forward, not postpone it. If we get more stable funding, we have to ensure that it does not just go into rescuing bankrupt companies to make them viable for their shareholders. We want to see a new deal for people working in social care. Statutory arrangements have to be made in the sector to improve pay and conditions.

My experience as a county councillor has honestly changed my mind about this: we need an expansion of local authority care. In my own county council division in Wigton, we have an excellent local authority care home. Unlike most authorities, Cumbria did not privatise all its care homes; indeed, we are building new ones. The care home in Wigton has been rated excellent two years running by the Care Quality Commission. We need a bigger role for the public sector in the provision of care. That would enable decency for workers who are doing such a valiant job in the present circumstances. It has to be backed up by action now on a long-term funding solution for the sector.