Elderly Social Care (Insurance) Bill [HL]

Baroness Verma Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for bringing this Bill to your Lordships’ House. It is an important Bill. I want to refer to my interest in the register as an adult social care provider for 21 years. Knowing the sector rather better than some of your Lordships, I would like to dismiss a few myths but also include some of the things that we should have addressed, not just today but many decades ago.

A crisis in social care is not a crisis of the last five or 10 years; it has been an ongoing crisis for a very long time. It is also important to note—and I address this directly to the noble Lord, Lord Hendy—that some of our providers are small businesses. Mine is a small business, and 75% of the people who work in my organisation have been with me for at least 15 years or more. So it is about the way we treat our care staff.

The fact we have been unable to professionalise and make people see it as a profession, by paying with a decent funding stream, is part of the problem. As I have raised on several occasions in your Lordships’ House, if we are to make sure the NHS is not overwhelmed, a serious look at social care, which actually prevents many people going to the NHS, will be a necessary and honest discussion. We know we need to protect the NHS, but we need to protect the social care sector as well. We are all living longer, but whether we are living healthier and longer is a different argument. As we all know, burdens on the NHS increase as we live longer.

We have never had an honest debate about the NHS and social care, side by side, and we need to have one. They are two sides of the same coin. While we can discuss lots of alternatives, it is important that this debate, yet again, enables us to look at alternative solutions. Ultimately, it is the duty of us all to ensure that, at whatever age we need support, it is available and we are not discriminated against simply because our illness or need is not recognised for NHS cover. I hope that, when the Government bring forward their Bill, we have a strong and robust discussion on social care needs.