Technical and Further Education Bill

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)]

My Lords, before we continue, I have a special request. Because the loop is not working, could noble Lords speak up when they are contributing? Thank you.

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico]

My Lords, I had got as far as noting that the university technical college in Cambridge had encountered major difficulties with recruitment. The jury is still out on this, but the technical college has joined the Parkside multi-academy trust, and we believe that because the multi-academy trust has financial responsibility for all four secondary schools in our charge, it is probably going to be a little easier to envisage recruiting children from one of our schools over into the academy trust, if they would be better suited there. But it seems to me a possible route to help the UTCs, because the money does not go away from the multi-academy trust—it stays in. We hope this will be a little better.

On careers advice generally, I support the amendments. However, I have been wondering, particularly in view of the provisions that make the Institute for Apprenticeships responsible for producing careers advice, whether one ought to take it away from schools. It is very difficult for a school to keep up with its expertise, but then I was horribly reminded by my noble friend Lady Morris that individual teachers at a school are very influential in what their students choose to go on and do. So I wonder whether we could group schools’ careers advice. We could probably do that inside a multi-academy trust, and I will take home from this debate the suggestion that we try. For example, the University of Cambridge provides a perfectly effective careers service, with professional, HR-trained people, who will never have met the people whose careers they are advising on but seem to be doing it perfectly satisfactorily. Providing experts in careers, rather than forcing teachers to become experts, might have legs as an idea. Indeed, I know there are parents paying for professional careers advice because it works better than what they are being offered by the school. I do not want to propose it as a formal amendment, but I would be interested to know the Government’s thinking on that.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I have also added my name to this amendment, and to Amendment 135C in the next group, which we will come to in a moment.

I really think the Government have some questions to answer. Why is this new regulator needed? The Minister might answer by saying that having its own regulator would add to the status of social work. That is a perfectly decent answer, but not one that is totally under the thumb of the Secretary of State. Perhaps the Minister could tell us what the cost of creating this new regulator would be. The NSPCC is concerned about the danger of it creating a two-tier system of statutory and non-statutory social workers. I wonder if the noble Lord can answer that. What is the justification for putting regulation and improvement together? That question was very ably outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. Why does this health and care profession have to be under the skirts of the Secretary of State? While I am about it, which Secretary of State are we talking about? The Bill does not say. Perhaps I should ask which woman it will be.

Many of us feel that if social workers were to become directly regulated by the Government, that would further weaken the trust—which is already fragile—between them and Whitehall. As the BASW said in the briefings we have all received, the Bill does nothing to address some of the real problems that affect social workers.

There is a real issue here because we have a significant shift of significant powers. It is a matter of principle. Why should social workers be the only profession in the health and care sector to be regulated by government? Nursing and medicine are not. They are public service professionals using their professional skills and judgment to make vital decisions about vulnerable members of the public. Bringing regulation under government control risks sending a demoralising set of signals to the sector. Loss of independence is likely to be seen as evidence that social work is really not up to it and needs a very close eye kept on it. That seems odd because it is at odds with what Ministers have been saying recently. They have been saying that social workers have been disempowered by command-and-control-type initiatives from central government and should be trusted to exercise their professional judgment and respected as professionals who undertake very complex work. Hear, hear! I agree with that. Why seek this government stranglehold now?

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that I have form in this area as the person who chaired the committee that set up the General Social Care Council, as the first chair of the General Social Care Council and as the chair of the Professional Standards Authority which oversaw the demise of the GSCC and the transfer of regulation to the HCPC. There are, as we know, terrible problems facing social work and social workers at the moment, so to be discussing these structural changes now is rather like rearranging the deckchairs on the “Titanic”. That said, I support the idea of getting very much more independence for the regulator of social work. The separation between regulation and improving standards is important. That is a very well-established principle. The Department of Health is promoting that principle as we speak, building on the Professional Standards Authority’s paper Rethinking Regulation. All this applies to other health regulators, as Ministers well know.

Independence is extremely important. The oversight of the current regulator, the HCPC, by the Professional Standards Authority—I am no longer its chair, but I still declare an interest—is a vital part of assuring not only its independence but its performance by scrutinising its fitness-to-practise cases and referring them to the High Court where it has failed to protect the public. I remind the Committee that the purpose of regulation is to protect the public.

I wonder whether the Minister has considered the disruption element of the Government’s proposals. The HCPC has only just finished, this month, dealing with the legacy fitness-to-practise cases it inherited from the General Social Care Council. If a new regulator is set up, it will have to deal with the legacy cases of the HCPC, which will mean two different systems with two different sets of staff and consequent expense. Cost is another area that we all have to be very concerned about with these issues, and I raised it at Second Reading.

--- Later in debate ---

That is why Amendment 135C, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is clear about what the mandate for the new improvement agency would be. That is very important because the confusion to which I have referred had a great impact on the work and sustainability of the College of Social Work. The new professional body must have a clear and explicit mandate and set of functions, and have a sustainable business plan. Noble Lords on this side of the Committee feel that that package would be very helpful to the Government in achieving their objective, which we all agree with, of improving the quality of social work, and doing so fairly quickly if we are to build on what has gone before.

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, one could scarcely fail to notice that when the Minister talked about the very welcome aspects of the things that this new regulator is going to do, they were, as others have said, mostly focused on the improvement of social work. There is no disagreement about this. Everybody wants to improve and support social work. However, the actual functions of a regulator always come very far down the Minister’s list when we talk about registration and the fitness to practise of social workers. Fitness to practise involves not being fit to practise and social workers being struck off a register, which is a very important part of what a regulator does.

Any regulatory system for social workers should ensure parity of esteem for the social work profession with that accorded to other public service professions entrusted to undertake high-risk professional tasks. For me, that is an argument for keeping the system within the Department of Health, which regulates many of those other professions. Any regulatory system should also provide stability for social workers. One thing that we have not given social workers in recent years is any form of stability. Some of us here are old enough to remember CCETSW before we had the GSCC, and all the controversy surrounding that. Then we went to the HCPC. That lack of stability has added to the problems of the workforce and the severe current retention problems with which we should all be concerned.

Any regulatory system must also be cost-effective to both central and local government and not be provided for at the expense of resources needed for service delivery, about which my noble friend Lady Howarth—I call her my noble friend—has already talked so eloquently. It must not result in the deterrent of unacceptably high registration fees falling on very poorly paid social workers. I am still not convinced about that. It seems to me that the HCPC already does parity, stability and being cost-effective. We could leave regulation there, along with consulting the HCPC to undertake some improvements, which I am sure it would be willing to do, and with the existing oversight of the Professional Standards Authority and a responsibility to the Privy Council, which is also where the HCPC sits. If we did that, and had a separate improvement agency, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, could be set up very quickly, and given the great amount of agreement from everybody in your Lordships’ House and across the piece, why does not the Minister at least give that serious consideration over the summer?

[Baroness Pinnock]

My Lords, the Minister referred earlier to the regulator having a role in fitness to practise. He is absolutely right; that is what a regulator has a duty to do. However, I refer again to the policy statement produced last month by the Department for Education and the Department of Health. It refers to professional standards which will cover four elements: on proficiency, performance, conduct and ethics and, it says:

“Continuing professional training and development”.

If I were looking through the eyes of a social worker at what was being set up here, I wonder how happy I would be to have a regulator that was going to establish the standards and have the right to strike me off if my proficiency was not up to scratch in any way, yet was also going to set out my continuous professional development. When we had the meeting with the chief social worker, she said that social workers have a range of ambitions when they go into social work, at one end of which is their role in challenging society and how the Government see society. That is one of the complex and noble reasons why people become interested in and go into social work.

Paragraph 119 of the policy statement relates to CPD. It states:

“The new regulator will set new standards for CPD”,

and refers to,

“options on how to ensure compliance … This will include appropriate sanctions for non-compliance”.

Here we have a regulator concerned with fitness to practise, as regulators are, while it may impose sanctions for non-compliance with what it has set up for professional development. That is at the heart of what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said earlier when he referred to the medical profession. He spoke about the importance of separating the state and government from what is at the heart of social work, as opposed to regulation.

So what is at the heart of development? Which route should we go down when we train social workers for mental health practice, for instance? Should it be the route that the Government may want, ensuring that more people are taken into secure units, or should the approach be more one of community care? If the regulator has responsibility for both fitness to practise and compliance with its own list of what CPD should include, we are down a very dangerous route, and I am sure the Minister would not want that to happen. CPD needs to be separate. If we have a profession, as we do, continuous professional development must be separated from the regulator. That is at the heart of this amendment, which I support.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, when I first read Part 2 of the Bill, to which I shall confine my remarks, my first reaction was, “You couldn’t make this up”. There are many good things in this Bill, as others have said, but on Part 2 I really have to say to the Government, “You cannot be serious”.

I must declare my interests, as I have a very personal involvement in this subject. It goes beyond being a social worker, with a great deal of interest, therefore, in how social workers are supported and recognised; I have form in the area of regulation of social work. In the late 1990s, I chaired the commission that recommended the setting up of the General Social Care Council, the GSCC. This had been wanted and called for by the social work profession and allied colleagues for many years, and the Government accepted the recommendation of my committee wholeheartedly. There was a great deal of rejoicing across my profession. In 2001, I served for six months as the interim first chair of the GSCC. By 2012, I was chair of the Professional Standards Authority, which reviewed the functioning of the GSCC, which was found wanting; subsequently, as chair of the PSA, I oversaw the transfer of regulatory responsibilities to the Health and Care Professions Council. I also helped to launch the College of Social Work, which was designated as the body that would oversee the professional functions, leaving the regulatory functions with HCPC. Noble Lords will see that I do not have a very good track record in this regard. The HCPC is now assessed by everybody who knows this field as doing an excellent job, and doing it most efficiently and cost effectively. So while I bow to no one in my desire to see the profession of social work properly recognised and supported, I have to ask the Minister why he is doing this, and what he expects to gain from it.

I have three main objections to the new regulator, and if the Minister can set my mind at rest about them, I shall be delighted and relieved. My first concern is one that was highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, about the conflict between different government departments. The primary purpose of a regulator is public protection. Does the Minister agree with that? There is no reference in the Bill to the public protection purpose of statutory regulation. The health and social care Act of 2015 introduced consistent public protection objectives across the nine independent regulators of health and care professionals, overseen by the aforesaid Professional Standards Authority. In that authority’s paper, Rethinking Regulation, which followed on the work of the Law Commission, which reviewed the existing regulatory framework, radical reform proposals had been made, which included reducing the number and cost of regulators. The Government have expressed support for those ideas and the Department of Health will shortly consult on reforms to professional regulation along those lines. The proposals from the Department for Education in this Bill therefore run entirely contrary to the principles of better regulation and to the approach of the Department of Health to the reform of regulation of health and care.

The regulatory landscape is incoherent and confusing, with a proliferation of regulatory organisations created piecemeal at different times, for different reasons, and in response to different problems. The regulatory proposals in this Bill perpetuate this error. Surely, the Government should have taken what the PSA calls a “right touch approach”, by clearly identifying the problem to be addressed and considering how the problem could best be resolved by making better use of, or reforming, the current arrangements. This could include ensuring that social work falls within the remit of the proposed reform of health and care professional regulation. I also have concerns that the Government have not thought properly about the scope and remit of the proposed new social work body within the wider context of health and care regulation.

I repeat: the primary purpose of a regulator is public protection. That is quite distinct from quality improvement functions, which are commonly carried out by a professional body or college, whose primary functions are to improve education, training and continuing professional development. It is also different from the representative role fulfilled by a membership organisation, such as the British Association of Social Workers, whose primary role is to represent the interests and views of its members and provide advice and support to them. A new body of the kind proposed, combining representative, improvement and regulatory roles, will create an organisation with competing, confused and conflicting responsibilities. The GSCC, previously responsible for regulating social workers, was itself criticised for having an unclear remit covering both regulatory and improvement functions—and that was wound up by the last Government, as I have already said.

Ahead of the transfer of regulation of social workers to the HCPC, the Government commented that they saw potentially significant benefits from,

“putting the regulation of social workers on a similar footing to the regulation of health professions”.

At a time when the need for a closer relationship between the health and social care services remains a very live issue—and how many times in this House do we talk about the need for closer co-operation?—this seems a very unwise thing to do. There is no evidence at all that the HCPC is not doing an effective and efficient job of regulating, so why confuse the situation?

My second concern is about the independence of the new regulatory body—or, I should say, the lack of independence. There is well-established principle in statutory professional regulation that regulation should be independent of government but with direct accountability to Parliament. The Bill proposes a potentially different model, giving broad powers that would allow the Secretary of State or another person—it is not clear who, or in what circumstances—to exercise regulatory powers, or a new regulator to be established.

There is no reference in the Bill to oversight of any new regulator by the Professional Standards Authority. The HCPC is currently overseen by the PSA. The PSA fulfils its role by scrutinising the fitness-to-practise decisions of the regulators and referring cases to the High Court where it considers that a decision may have failed to protect the public. Again, we come back to the essential importance of protecting the public. While the idea of a separate regulator for social work may seem attractive, it should not be brought about by the loss of the independence which the current system—overseen, I remind your Lordships, by the Privy Council—provides. There should also be a role for a voice for professional social work. I remind the right reverend Prelate that the College of Social Work was set up and abolished by the Government, although it was making good progress until the withdrawal of government funding led to its closure.

My final concern is about cost. The up-front cost of setting up such a body will have to be borne by government, unless it is going to be borne by social workers. Each year, social workers pay £90 to remain on the HCPC’s register. Therefore, the proposed policy will entail either a significant increase in fees for social workers or substantial ongoing costs to the taxpayer if it cannot operate on those fees. The annual report for 2010-11 highlights that the GSCC’s expenditure on regulatory activities for 2009-10 was just under £19 million. Roughly £2.5 million of that was funded by social worker registration fees and the rest—around £16 million —was funded by government. According to a recent Written Answer from the Department of Health, the closure of the GSCC in 2012 and the transfer of its regulatory responsibilities cost £17.9 million but has led to an annual saving to the Government of £13.5 million. Have the Government done a thorough review of the cost of their proposals? At the time of the GSCC’s abolition, the Government estimated that the increase in fees paid by social workers would have to be at least £235 a year if it were to be self-financing. I cannot believe that the Government want badly paid social workers to pay this, so we must ask where the money is coming from and whether it is a proper use of public money when social work services and training are under severe strain. I would like the Minister to answer very specifically on cost review and how it will be funded. I do not question the Government’s intention to try to be supportive of social workers, but I have to ask: is this the way to do it?

I hope the Government will listen to the wise words of your Lordships’ House.

Children: Drugs

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Monday 11th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. In view of the fact that this point has been made by a number of people, I will look at it in detail and write to him about it.

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that children who live in households where there is much drug use are at risk not only from the drugs but of becoming young carers for their parents, who are addicted? What is the Government’s policy on helping those young carers?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness makes an extremely good point. Certainly, this is something I have seen on a number of occasions. Last month we launched a new campaign—“Together, we can tackle child abuse”—to encourage members of the public to report child abuse and neglect and just this kind of situation. I hope this has some effect on the point the noble Baroness makes.

Childcare: Early-years Funding

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how their proposed plans to increase free early-years childcare will be funded.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, our current estimate is that this will cost around £350 million, to be delivered from reducing the tax relief on pensions for those earning more than £150,000 a year. We want to make sure that funding is sufficient to providers and fair to taxpayers. That is why we have committed to increasing the average funding rate, and to get this right we will hold a funding review. Details of this will be announced before Second Reading on 16 June.

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

That is very good news to the House, but is the Minister familiar with the remarks made recently by the chief executive of the Pre-School Learning Alliance? He said:

“Just about everybody that you talk to who has an ounce of knowledge about delivering childcare will tell you it is underfunded”.

He went on to say that,

“the Government … has no idea how much it costs to deliver childcare”.

In the light of those comments, can the Minister assure the House that the Government do know how much it costs and that essential childcare services will be properly funded?

[Lord Nash]

I assure the noble Baroness that we will be taking this extremely seriously—that is why we are funding the review—and we will protect essential services.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to concentrate on the care agenda and especially on the contribution of the 6.5 million people who are caring for older, sick or disabled loved ones. Your Lordships will be familiar with the figures that I never tire of quoting—that their unpaid care saves the state £119 billion a year and that, without their contribution, health and social care services would completely collapse.

Let me begin by being positive. The commitment in the gracious Speech to integrate health and social care, which many of us have been banging on about for many years, is very welcome, as is the proposal to increase the NHS budget by £8 billion a year. Looking back at the work of the previous Parliament, no one could have welcomed more than I did—and indeed the whole carers’ movement did—the introduction of the Care Act, enshrining as it does the rights for carers, for which many of us have been fighting for many years, and the very important changes made in the Children and Families Act, which also benefited parent carers. So far, so positive, but there is no explicit commitment to increase spending on social care and consequently much worry about how the positive changes introduced under the Care Act may be undermined.

Historic underfunding of social care has left thousands of older and disabled people without access to the care that they need and vastly increased pressure on family carers, who are stepping in to provide care—as families always do—at great personal, societal and economic cost. ADASS and the Local Government Association suggest that £3.53 billion has been taken from adult social care budgets over the past four years and that:

“Contrary to what the Government has said repeatedly since the 2010 Spending Review, its injection of an additional £7.2 billion for adult social care over the last four years has not solved the social care funding question”.

The number of carers’ assessments has been falling steadily since 2008, with a drop of 7% over the last seven years, despite the significant growth in the number of carers. Higher eligibility requirements mean that 500,000 older and disabled people who would have got care in 2009 are no longer entitled to it, placing extra pressure on carers. This is reflected in Carers UK’s most recent State of Caring survey, done this year, where almost one in three respondents said that they or the person they care for have experienced a change in the amount of care and support that they receive and, of those, 42% said that the amount of care and support arranged by social services has been reduced. Half of all carers responding to the State of Caring survey are worried about the impact of cuts to care and support services over the next year.

The Government need urgently to commit to a sustainable settlement for social care and the NHS that sets out the funding mechanisms that will deliver the money that is needed to implement the Care Act, tackle the existing gap between need and supply, and keep pace with the growing demand that we can never ignore.

Let me turn now to social security. It is deeply concerning that the cumulative impact of welfare reform measures will affect carers. The prospect of a further £12 billion in cuts to the social security budget, which we have heard about a lot today, is causing fear and anxiety among carers. We need urgent reassurances that carers’ benefits will be protected from further cuts.

Almost half of carers who responded to the State of Caring survey are struggling to make ends meet: 41% are cutting back on essentials such as food and heating, 26% are borrowing from family and friends, and 38% are using their life savings to get by. This squeeze on carers’ finances is not sustainable in the long term. Over half of carers responding to the State of Caring survey—it was completed, by the way, before the election—are worried about the impact of cuts to social security over the next year. As a result of the changes that the Government have already made, carers will see a cut of over £1 billion to their incomes between 2011 and 2018.

Let me turn specifically to carer’s allowance, which is the main benefit for carers. It is not means tested. The benefit is worth £62.10 per week or £3,229 if claimed for a year. It is the lowest benefit of its kind and provided to those providing at least 35 hours of care a week. Almost 700,000 people under the age of 65 receive the allowance and 72% of those recipients are women. Although it may be the lowest benefit of its kind, carer’s allowance means a great deal to carers and provides important recognition, as well as income. Any cut to carer’s allowance would be severely detrimental to carers and take policy back at least 30 years to when women were dependent on their partner’s or parents’ income. Again, we need urgent reassurances from the Minister tonight that carer’s allowance will not be cut or restricted to those entitled to universal credit only. I conclude by reminding the Minister of what I am sure he knows: as well as it being morally unacceptable not to support those who provide so much care, it is also economically short-sighted.