Care Workers: Professional Register

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Only last week we opened a consultation on whether or not to make registration mandatory and to move towards it. When I spoke to people in the department about why it is currently voluntary and not mandatory, they said it was because they did not want to inadvertently put people off registering. They were worried that some people might leave the sector if registration was mandatory now. The noble Lord can shake his head, but this is a very real concern. We want to make sure it is voluntary first and we are consulting on the steps towards mandatory registration.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord’s Question is timely, with the Government’s consultation on future statutory regulation and the criteria that could form the basis of assessing whether regulation is appropriate. We all want to see care workers given the professional status that they deserve, but, as has been said, this needs a whole suite of key improvements on pay, training, career structure and development. Does the Minister agree that paying staff a wage that truly reflects the importance and value of their work is an essential first step and what action are the Government taking to ensure this?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

As the noble Baroness will appreciate, many people who work in social care are employed by private care home owners and other bits of the sector. If she looks at the minimum wage, there has been an announcement of 6.6%, effective from 1 April, which means that workers will be paid more, but one of the bases of some of the additional funding that we have announced is to convince local authorities to put pressure on private care home owners and others to make sure that they pay staff more.