Health and Social Care Update

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I simply do not recognise the characterisation that the noble Baroness has just presented. The view of our treatment of the elderly and vulnerable taken by Amnesty during the pandemic is completely inappropriate and inaccurate. Huge steps have been taken to protect those who are vulnerable and elderly. I cannot think of a country that could have done more under the circumstances. I therefore reject its analysis.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this is a Statement on health and social care. I am astonished that the Minister has confined the Government’s policy on adult social care following the pandemic to a couple of sentences. He must know that most of the adult social care in this country is provided by family carers. They are regularly ignored in such Statements, but many of the 6 million carers looking after vulnerable adults, including those with learning difficulties, have been pushed to breaking point by the pandemic. Is there nothing to say to them about access to support services or respite care and nothing on carer’s allowance? Without support for these essential carers, policies such as enhanced hospital discharge, as mentioned in the Statement, will not be feasible. What is the Government’s strategy for dealing with this crisis in care?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I endorse completely the noble Baroness’s remarks that we depend on the generosity, public spirit and kindness of family carers who provide an enormous amount of support for their loved ones. Without them, the system could not possibly exist and the world would be a much graver place. I recognise that many carers have been pushed very hard by the pandemic. We have put a huge amount of resource into local authorities, which are responsible for providing support for those families, and that includes the kind of respite support that the noble Baroness has rightly pointed to. I am sure that more could be done and I would welcome any correspondence on this by way of follow-up that she would like to send my way.