Older People: Their Place and Contribution in Society

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Friday 14th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I am here as a result of an invitation from the most reverend Primate. I confess that I chaired the commission that recommended his appointment 10 years ago and I rather sense that the House approves of the decision of that commission. As so many have said, the most reverend Primate has given us a wonderful 10 years. I endorse what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, said: we love him. We all—me in particular—wish him not a happy retirement but a happy new job in Cambridge. He certainly deserves it.

This House has spent months looking at welfare reform, particularly the need to help the vulnerable elderly. Therefore, it is timely that the most reverend Primate should bring us back to the fact that the elderly have a great deal to contribute. It is important that younger people outside this House recognise that contribution as well as the cost that the vulnerable elderly inevitably impose on younger members of society through their tax. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, may like to rewrite Shakespeare as regards her four suggested parts of a person’s life. However, older people, not only those in this House, make an invaluable contribution to communities at both national and local level. The vote of older people is becoming significantly more important, which means that the Government of the day have to look at what older people need and want. It is very important that government recognise that most of us are computer literate and work through the net. We have already had this morning a significant contribution from someone who is over 90.

I want to make two specific points in relation to two very important sets of contributors. The first was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, and raises an ageism issue. She talked about the Supreme Court. The age at which the Supreme Court judges and other senior judges, including myself, used to be required to retire was 75. However, the Government of the day—this Government—are requiring people to work for longer. Oddly, however, the previous Government —and, so far, the present Government—required Supreme Court judges and other senior judges to retire at 70. It is extremely interesting that we have in this House a number of former members of the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords and of the Supreme Court who retired at 75 but are continuing to make a significant contribution to this House. Why on earth can they not continue to make a contribution to the Supreme Court? It really is quite extraordinary. It is a backward step and I was very sad when the previous Government took it.

I, in fact, retired at 71 because it suited me to, and I started a new career in this House at 72. It has not been a retirement, I am glad to say. However, the top judges who are having to go at the age of 70, at least one of whom had to go after 18 months in the Supreme Court, are a real loss to the nation. He would have been valuable for another five years. Therefore, I ask this Government to look again at the issue of retirement at 70 or 75, at least for the Supreme Court. If those judges are not fit, their colleagues will quietly tell them and they will go earlier. There cannot be any reason not to do this. I ask the Government to reconsider.

I want to raise a specific issue that has already been raised to some extent by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland. I am president of the Grandparents’ Association and I should like to spend a moment or two talking about the enormous contribution made by grandparents, other kinship carers and godparents. They save local authorities a vast amount of money. Again and again, a grandparent is asked to take care of a grandchild in order that the state does not take that child into care. This is in addition to voluntary arrangements made through the family. This requires older people to have a complete change of life and to stop having ordinary pleasures because they cannot go out in the evening. They often have to give up their jobs and can descend from well paid jobs into a form of poverty. It is a scandal that we are actually relying upon grandparents, kinship carers and godparents to do this.

Perhaps I may raise a case that is close to me—that of my secretary, who has given me permission to tell noble Lords about it. In her 50s, she was asked by social services to take over the care of her eight year-old goddaughter, which she willingly did. She has managed to continue to work, unlike a large number of other people. Her goddaughter, Annie, is now 14 and is a most lovely girl. She is devoted to her godmother, who hopes, in due course, to be allowed to adopt her—at Annie’s request. However, my secretary’s life has totally changed. She cannot do the things that she would otherwise have done, and Annie is acutely conscious of that. My secretary was asked by social services to do this and she willingly took it on, for the love of the girl. That love is reciprocated. However, my secretary received from social services a very modest amount of money for a maximum period of three months. She is managing but she would be grateful for a small amount of money, just to help with the things that she would like to give her goddaughter.

However, for grandparents and other kinship carers who give up work and descend into the poverty to which I have referred, it is possible for local authorities to give them money, but the local authorities, because there is no requirement to do it, do not do it. It is not fair. I speak as the president of the Grandparents’ Association and hear many cases of people in extremely dire straits. When the financial situation of this country improves, I urge the Government seriously to consider requiring local authorities to make some modest contribution—means-tested, obviously—to grandparents and kinship carers to help them in the job they do, which is relieving society and local government of the huge burden of a vast number of children. I repeat, we are talking about a vast number of children, most of whom would otherwise be in care. This issue really must be tackled at some stage.

I apologise to the House as I probably will be unable to stay until the end of the debate because I have an unavoidable medical appointment that I must attend this afternoon. I think that the most reverend Primate knows that.