Carer’s Leave Bill

Baroness Uddin Excerpts

Friday 3rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, at the outset I take this opportunity to acknowledge the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, who led the earlier debate so magnificently. The ambitions of her Bill were the fundamental objectives of many campaigns, and of a project a number of women set up in Tower Hamlets called the maternity services liaison advocacy scheme. It is a joy to see that the noble Baroness was speaking, and I am sorry I missed the debate. It is also an honour and a personal privilege to be taking part in this debate, and I want to humbly thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for his thorough introduction; he need not have worried at all.

Many statistics on unpaid carers are constantly bandied about, but the facts are glaring; indeed, we know that many more carers are not in the public eye or paid for by the public purse. Like many hundreds of thousands of families, we have cared for our loving and beautiful 44 year-old son—a young man who inspires us every day—without a shred of the public care system support which may or may not have been in place. Very early on in our professional and business careers, the decision had to be made that, as parents, one of us would need to stay at home to ensure that our son was safe and cared for.

I can tell your Lordships that even enlightened local authorities were less than pleasant when women, in particular, sought time off for caring responsibilities, which in many instances counted against their career progression. Not much appears to have changed for substantial numbers of carers on zero-hours contracts or for poorly paid part-time workers who are almost certainly unlikely to gain from the proposed Bill. However, I keep hoping that one of these days, our Government’s compassionate and caring conservatism, levelling up and all the other “ism” ambitions will eventually eradicate these horrible, cruel, medieval working conditions in the world’s sixth largest economy. As a society, if we can afford to spend billions on crap PPE and weapons of war, we can also empower with a decent and just wage the army of social carers and family carers who are upholding our nation.

For those in our social welfare system, £69 for 24/7 carer’s allowance, which has increased by only £15 over the last decade, is an insult. I can understand why many families such as ours simply opt out of the system. Many families may not even be aware of these cumbersome systems, or able to navigate them for this miserly amount. It is therefore important that changes are relayed through the NHS and DWP systems to ensure that these entitlements are known to carers.

I welcome these proposals for the carer’s leave entitlement. With hand on heart, I say that they are a long time coming. More than four decades ago, as one of the founders and the manager of a project, I ensured that all members of our all-women staff team had written into their contract their entitlement to childcare and other care responsibilities, including emergency provisions, as the Bill aspires to do. This decision was critical to keep and foster talented and skilled women staff members, many of whom would otherwise have left and given up their employment. Many are still forced to choose, even today, as powerfully advocated by noble Lords during the Second Reading of the Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Bill. I believe that our practice was pioneering in the 1980s and had a transformative impact on local services and statutory and voluntary organisations. Local and national leadership are critical. I believe that most employers will be supportive, given the available statistics: almost every household will face these dilemmas in their home sooner or later.

We are all too familiar with “A week is a long time in politics”. Well, let me say that providing care and support for vulnerable loved ones with special physical or emotional needs is a lifetime of devotion. We must do all we can to prevent it becoming an untold toil. The flexibility and wide-ranging application proposed by the Bill are therefore welcome.

I have a generic point. Regardless of whether there are 10 million or 1 million carers, it would be more comforting if the Government recognised—they must—that family support systems are holding up an otherwise totally broken system of social care. From all the facts, well rehearsed in this Chamber, we see that we are not valuing carers and their real worth enough, in any way. Every family such as ours is still holding up, not only when the formal care systems are broken, to make sure that our vulnerable loved ones live with dignity and independence.

It appears to have become customary to heroise individuals or families as a way of illustrating the impact of our policies and legislation on some service users. The question for me is not about one individual experience or my personal experience, which is painful and lifelong enough. As legislators, we are responsible for making a difference to many more families, communities and those in wider society who so often cannot access benefits or services. Therefore, gender and other equality impact assessments of the Bill are absolutely a must to realise the aspiration behind the deliberation in this Chamber. It has far-reaching implications that can change people’s lives.

I am thankful to the many children’s and other carers’ organisations that have written to me, and I am always beholden to my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley who has campaigned for social and economic justice for carers for so long and so relentlessly. I salute her constantly, and very often in this Chamber.

I ask the Minister to write to me with details of how government departments reach out to communities hitherto beyond the reach of many respected national organisations, particularly communities in inner cities and deprived areas. How do government departments relay information on rights to families at the coalface of social and financial isolation? Consistency in our policies should be joined up, and not undermine access to information. For example, government departments are now routinely cutting or shutting down phone lines, instead directing service users to online services on the assumption that everyone has access to a smartphone or a computer. It is not so, and we know the facts about digital exclusion. We also know, and heard throughout the pandemic, of the impact of digital exclusion on the most vulnerable and needy. When they cannot afford food or energy bills, the upkeep of broadband or a computer device is pretty much out of the reach of most of them. We must therefore take the utmost care to undertake an impact analysis of all the legislative and procedural frameworks on carers and other vulnerable groups who suffer disproportionately.

As a community campaigner, I say that there is so much more to discuss, including the cutbacks and desperate shortage in social care, and the lack of respite and adequate day care facilities or holiday provision, all of which are putting huge extra pressures—I will not use the word “burden”—on families already stretched beyond their capacity. We speak of civilised society, and surely the heroic and unrelenting support that carers in their millions provide speaks volumes about our civility and honour. We are already saving the Government hundreds of billions, and none of us should rest here until there is full recognition and parity of employment rights for carers. So with great joy I support these good, small steps.