Social Care: Adults

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Many noble Lords recognise the challenges faced by not just this sector but all sectors, during Covid. One issue we have been looking at for many years, over subsequent Governments—we discussed this during the Health and Care Bill—is that social care was seen as a Cinderella service for many years. For the first time, thanks to noble Lords’ support, we managed to get the Health and Care Bill through to have a properly integrated health and care system. We are also looking at how we can make sure that we properly understand the health and care landscape, with the register and the hub, and that it is a vocation that more people find attractive.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I urge my noble friend, in light of the extraordinary number of vacancies in the social care sector—more and more staff are leaving to join other sectors—to urge the Government to revisit the Immigration Rules that do not allow overseas care workers, who could fill those gaps, to come in. We have a special system for agricultural workers; surely my noble friend agrees that we must not put picking fruit and vegetables above the needs of the most vulnerable in our society.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for the question, but make the point that it is important that we look not only to our domestic workforce but to recruit people from far and wide to fill those gaps. We have always done that. As I often say from this place, we must remember that public services in this country were saved by people from the Commonwealth after the war. They played a very important role in making sure that this country and its public services recovered after the war. On recruitment from overseas, on 15 February, we added care workers to the health and care visa and shortage occupation list, allowing these roles to be recruited from overseas. We hope that will enable us to fill thousands of eligible vacancies.