Social Care

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

As part of my self-imposed induction into membership of the Health Committee, I undertook a tour of various institutions in my constituency in order to understand health and social care better, and learnt about the new concept of independent living schemes. Earlier this year the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh opened Priory View, which operates an independent living scheme in Dunstable. It presents a model of the way forward for social care. Older people are not isolated or lonely: there are exercise classes and loads of other activities. We need to get accommodation for such people right for the future, as Central Bedfordshire council has done.

I also visited Orchard Lodge care home in Tilsworth, and was struck by the very high standard of care. It has been rated “good” by the Care Quality Commission, and I was incredibly impressed by the dedication of all its staff. Another home, Rosewood Court in Dunstable, a beautiful building with wonderful facilities, closed this year because the owners could not find managers and staff to run it. That obviously caused a huge amount of stress and upset to residents and to their families, who had to move them at very short notice.

I also met some care providers in my constituency. I remember most clearly a conversation with a lady who ran one of the providers. She ran it very well, and is a former nurse who is working in care for all the right reasons. She said, “I would be too ashamed to go into a school to try to attract young people to come into my profession.” That is not right; we must not have such a situation. I asked, “What would it take for you to attract them?” She said, “A salary would be nice.” I asked, “How much?” She said, “£16,000 to £18,000 a year.” That is not much to ask for people looking after us in our old age.

On travel costs, I have said before and will say again that it should shame every one of us in this House that MPs get 45p a mile when we travel on parliamentary business, yet carers are often lucky to get 30p. What is good enough for an MP is good enough for a careworker. We need to sort that out.

Constituents have also raised the issue of the private subsidy of local authority places. It is not right that some people pay much more for the same place in order to subsidise local authorities. Constituents also tell me that they want even more rigour in the quality of care provided, so that we have real respect for those cared for and also real respect and proper career progression for carers.

We must also break down the division between nursing and social care. Simon Stevens has in the past described these as two great tribes of the healthcare system. There could, in a properly regulated way, often be more co-operation; they could do more together, which would be more efficient.

I have called for a number of steps that will cost money, and we need real honesty in this debate, because it will cost. I am very impressed by what I have read in both the Communities and Local Government Committee report on adult social care published in March this year and the House of Lords Select Committee report on the long-term sustainability of the NHS and adult social care. Both Committees of this Parliament have in reports published this year pointed us to what is happening in Germany and Japan. Those countries have mandatory social insurance mechanisms, which have been in place for a long time; the German system was put in place in 1994. It is not only Germany and Japan who have got their acts together on funding; so, too, have France and the Netherlands. This is not a recent problem; it did not arise in 2010 or 2015. It has been with us for a long time, and parties on both sides of the House have failed to grasp the nettle.

So I say to the two Ministers on the Front Bench, for whom I have the greatest respect—my hon. Friends the Members for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for Nuneaton (Mr Jones)—that there must be urgency on this issue, and there is a willingness among our constituents for it to be grasped in a fair way. People are prepared to pay more; we know that there is public support for hypothecated taxes—people know that what they pay is going to look after them later in life.

Some of the social insurance systems—those in Germany and Japan in particular— can point the way forward. So I say to the Ministers, “Get on an aeroplane now, go to Japan, go to Germany, and do the preparatory work, so that when we have the Green Paper in January, we can have some really good ideas, and we can grasp the nettle, take this forward and give people the care they deserve.”