Skills for Care Report

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

First, let me say that we value social care. As the noble Baroness will be aware, the £500 million was in addition to a £5.4 billion increase over three years. Again, that underlines the importance that we see behind adult social care and how it is a crucial part of our whole plan, as outlined in ABCD, not only to give the right conditions and dignity for the elderly people whom the noble Baroness mentions but as a vital way of releasing space in our hospitals—this drives right through the system—to create space both in A&E and through the rest of the care system. It is an area of vital interest and something that I can assure noble Lords has a lot of focus from the department.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly welcome the Government’s action to put care workers on the shortage occupation list this year, which is important for unlocking immediate supply. However, might I ask the Minister to note two key points from Skills for Care’s report, which are important for further action for sustainable care workers? The first is that, although the retention rate has remained more or less stable since last year, the starter rate has fallen from 37.3% to 30.8%. Can I suggest that the Minister looks at more incentives for starters? The second point is that, on average, employers with favourable work metrics such as high levels of learning and development have better CQC ratings. Given the UQ coming up later, that is another critical area to look at for improvement.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is correct that this is also a labour supply issue. Part of the benefit of living in an economy with full employment is, of course, that there is little unemployment. Part of the downside of that is the competition for jobs. My noble friend rightly points out the need to recruit more in this sector; that is why I am pleased that she mentioned the work we are doing to add this sector to the essential workers list so that we can recruit people from overseas and get essential workers in.