Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point: whatever our other disagreements, he is absolutely right to focus on that issue, as so many others have done. Of course we want to have a labour market that works, and of course we want to have a tourism sector that works, but there is a problem in the private rented sector, particularly in beautiful parts of our country such as those he represents, where homes are being turned into Airbnbs and holiday lets in a way that impedes the capacity of young workers to find a place where they can stay in the locale that they love and contribute to the economy of which they wish to be part. We will be bringing forward some planning changes to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which are intended to ensure that we have restrictions on the way in which dwelling homes can be turned into Airbnbs. I look forward to working with the hon. Gentleman and other colleagues, including my hon. Friends the Members for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) and for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), to make sure that those reforms will work.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State talks about childcare measures, but when it comes to people with caring responsibilities, childcare measures are not enough in themselves. Some 1.7 million people are economically inactive because of caring responsibilities, and there was no support for unpaid family carers in the Budget. Caring responsibilities are a major reason for people not being able to work or having to cut back their hours, and this Budget was a massive disappointment to those people.

[Michael Gove]

I appreciate the point that the hon. Lady makes, and she is right to draw attention to and thank those who exercise caring responsibilities. The family is the foundation of our welfare society, even before the creation of the welfare state, and we need to work in partnership with carers everywhere. I know that she and others—including, if I may say so, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey)—have come forward with proposals to ensure that we can better support carers. It is the mission of the Secretaries of State at the DWP and the Department of Health and Social Care to see what more can be done, particularly in the wake of the covid pandemic, which has placed particular pressures on some of the most vulnerable in our society.

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[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

In the Budget, the Government missed an important opportunity to support unpaid carers. There was also no mention of social care and there were no measures to fix the current crisis, which is increasing the workload of unpaid carers.

On Budget day, which was also Young Carers Action Day, members of the all-party parliamentary group on young carers and young adult carers met to hear from young carers. One was Rochelle, who has been a carer since the age of 12. She told us that her mother had bipolar disorder—type 2—and was sectioned. Rochelle said that she had no interaction with the mental health professionals who supported her mother despite the fact that she saved her mother’s life twice through her knowledge of first aid. Rochelle’s mother lost £20,000 of her savings through fraud by someone who befriended her. Rochelle told her teachers at school about that, but they did nothing to help.

Rochelle got no help as a young carer until she went to Kingston University through the KU Cares programme. The good news is that she is now studying law part time while working as a full-time member of staff at the university on work to recognise and address the unique challenges and structural disadvantages that some groups of students face. Rochelle won an award for charity and third sector work presented at the House of Lords in December 2018, and she shared her story with the charity Our Time to encourage other young carers.

There are 800,000 young carers like Rochelle who need better support. One young carer told the Carers Trust that:

“Being a young carer feels like we have been forgotten. There is not enough support to help us.”

A recent survey by the Carers Trust showed that the situation for young carers is getting worse. The majority of young carers now spend more of their time caring than they did last year, and around half of young carers care for more people. In a Budget that claimed to be about getting people back to work, there were no significant measures to help the many unpaid carers who cannot work or have to reduce their hours due to caring.

The Work and Pensions Secretary referred briefly to carers in his speech, when he said that

“we know that 1.7 million people say they are economically inactive because they have caring responsibilities.”—[Official Report, 16 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 1015.]

He went on to talk about childcare but said nothing about support for carers.

Worse still, the Health Service Journal has reported that the Government are set to cut planned spending on the adult social care workforce and on reform and integration by at least £500 million. The workforce funding announced in December 2021 would have invested in

“knowledge, skills, health and wellbeing and recruitment policies”

in social care. That money is sorely needed in a sector with a 10% vacancy rate, but it is now expected to be halved. The same reports suggest that the already miserly funding pot of up to £25 million in funding for carers will be cut to nothing, as will £300 million earmarked

“to integrate housing into local health and care strategies”

to improve supported living. Leaders across the sector have rightly criticised those cuts, because this is no time to cut social care or, even worse, to cut the existing pitiful level of Government funding of support for carers.

The Budget missed the opportunity to do something about the crisis in social care, but the Government cannot keep ignoring it. The system has already eroded to a level that fails patients, staff, families and unpaid carers, and the impact of that failure will be serious and far-reaching for both social care and the NHS.