Skills for Care Report

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The noble Baroness is correct that a number of people are on zero-hours contracts. As I am sure she is aware, their employment is through a number of agencies and local authorities, but it is an issue in a number of places and goes to the wider conversation about how we make this sector an attractive place to work. Earlier, my colleague mentioned the Skills for Care working group, which found that a significant proportion of all employers—around 20%—have a turnover rate of only around 10% versus the 29% average. So, clearly there are areas where certain employers do a fantastic job of not only recruiting but retaining, and making the sector an attractive place to work. I believe that the whole emphasis of the conversation we are having now is exactly about how to make this sector an attractive place to work because, as we all know, it is a vital part of our care and health system.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister referred to the £500 million investment in social care but this is only his fourth day in the job. Many people in your Lordships’ House know that that money is for winter pressures and was omitted from the budget for the NHS and social care at the beginning of the year. Without it, social care would be in even deeper trouble than it is now. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, made an extremely important point about zero-hours contracts. The problem of staff working in domiciliary care is that there is not enough money even to allow them to be paid for travelling between clients. There is a real shortage of money. This is a group of dedicated workers who are being treated very badly. Will the Minister undertake to look at this particular problem?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Any industry with the sort of turnover rate that was mentioned earlier demonstrates that there is a need to look further into it, so I absolutely accept the premise of the question and, as I mentioned before, the importance of this area. As I have said before, this is also about looking at areas of best practice because we can always look to spend more money but we know that there are limitations on the public purse. I would not be doing my job if I did not try to see where we can learn from good employers, employ those practices and see whether we can spread them wider so that everyone has the same level.

The other point that I made previously was about opening this up. We know that our healthcare system is founded on good workers from all around the world. They can be a bedrock. I am delighted that we are looking into that area now. We are starting to see good numbers of people coming in from abroad. It is an excellent level of entry into our country. There are a number of things we can do to improve the situation but I completely agree with the noble Baroness on the importance of tackling it.