Care Bill [Lords]

Debate between David Ward and Baroness Keeley

Monday 10th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ward]

I will try to hit my five-minute target by excluding a lot of other comments, including on the eligibility criteria, which I have spoken about at length on other occasions.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) effectively made the case about the false economy, whereby the criteria are at the wrong level and people’s conditions deteriorate, so they and the state face a greater cost. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) referred to the provision to identify patients who are or may become carers. I am concerned about carers who end up becoming patients or needing care because of a lack of support. We need to consider that, too.

I will confine my comments to new clauses 7 and 9. Without those, the rest is almost irrelevant. My right hon. Friend referred to the elephant in the room. An elephant in the room is something we are vaguely aware of; we know it is there but we are not prepared to talk about it. Out there, people are talking about the crucial issue of whether these services can be afforded. So much in the Bill is so good, but we are in danger of casting doubt on the deliverability of what we know is good and on whether it can be implemented.

As is often the case, it is no use relying on the good old principle of localism and local authorities making the decision to pick up these things. There is a difference between localism that is freedom and localism that is an abrogation of responsibility by Government to fund services during a national crisis. If we get that wrong, we will simply give local authorities the freedom to fail. We need to ensure that that does not happen.

The sad thing is that, although there is so much good will out there for the Bill— we are in grave danger of not responding to the comments of the voluntary and community sector and the public sector generally on the principles of the Bill and many of its provisions—there is a suspicion that, at the end of the day, we cannot deliver on it. The question is why would we not support new clauses 7 and 9. We are asking for assurances, not for additional money, because the truth is we do not really know. We are asking for assurances through a review. We are asking not for additional funding but for a commitment to a review.

I was going to give a grand finale about the voyage into the unknown, but it is not unknown, is it? We know that huge demands will be placed on the system and that that will have grave implications for many people who are receiving and providing care. We know that that is on the way. We think we have a system in place through the Bill that will enable us to deliver on that. The big question is not an elephant in the room. The groups that I am working with on the Bradford Cares projects, Age Concern, Mencap, Scope and the Bradford and District Disabled People’s Forum say that this is good and they like so much of the Bill, but they raise their eyebrows and say, “Will the funding be there?” That is the big question that is asked over and again. Through new clauses 7 and 9, we can at least give them some faith that we recognise that it is a big issue and that we are seeking to identify and meet our responsibilities to fund what we all want to do and see.

[Barbara Keeley]

In introducing new clause 3, the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) said how he felt that the NHS institutionally must change to identify and support carers. Of course I agree with that. My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) introduced new clauses 19, 20 and 21. She mentioned my private Member’s Bill, which I feel is having its last outing today in these new clauses; it proposed measures on the identification of carers. I want to touch on how long these issues have been around.

Eleven years ago, I completed a project on identifying and providing support for carers and co-wrote a report on that. The report made recommendations to Government, NHS bodies, GPs and their teams on how important it was to identify and support carers. That project mapped 36 primary care support initiatives for carers run by the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. We are talking about a long time ago. We felt that the role of carers, including their contribution to the work of the NHS, had generally been under-recognised and under-valued.

Through the 1990s, to the point where I wrote that report, we had carers assessments following the excellent Carers (Recognition and Services) Act 1995, introduced by Malcolm Wicks. That was strengthened by the Carers and Disabled Children Act 2000, which enhanced the carer’s right to an assessment. We even had in 1999 standard 6 of the national service framework for mental health, which said:

“all individuals who provide regular and substantive care for a person on the Care Programme Approach should have an assessment of their caring, physical and mental health needs, repeated on at least an annual basis”.

Even at that point, the Department of Health said that the implementation of the carers’ right to an assessment four years in was

“patchy. Assessments are not always carried out. Some carers are offered very sensitive practical and emotional support. But others receive very little, or no help”.

Fast-forward 15 years to the Care Bill, and carers are still in a similar situation. The identification of carers and referring them to sources of advice and support is still not happening on an adequate scale, and we have had all that legislation and good practice. Carers UK has told us that two thirds of carers that it surveyed said that, although their GP knew they had caring responsibilities, their GP did not give them any extra help. We have heard examples of what that can mean.

Carers week is in June, and we look forward to that. We know that in that week we meet carers at events. There is a common theme: they tell us repeatedly they are not getting advice and information to help them care. They can be carers of people with cancer, carers for people with terminal illness, carers of people with Parkinson’s or of people with dementia. Does the Minister want to start changing that for carers week this year? Does he want to go along to carers week events and have carers start to say to him, “I have been identified by my GP and my GP does recognise my caring role”? I hope he does, because I have heard so many people say how much it would have meant to them and what a difference it would have made to their caring if their GP had recognised it.

Even for conditions such as Parkinson’s, only one in 10 carers has been offered an assessment. These are people who are caring very often more than 50 hours a week, and, as a disease such as Parkinson’s progresses, up to 24 hours a day. They and the people caring for somebody who has had a stroke or who has dementia are the people who really need advice, support and breaks. These are the reasons we must support new clauses 3, 19, 20 and 21.

The Care Bill puts great emphasis on carers assessments rather than on the identification of carers, and I introduced a private Member’s Bill on that in September 2012. The clauses in that Bill, which we see again today, would have ensured that NHS bodies had procedures in place to identify carers and to promote their health and well-being and ensure they receive information and advice. I believe the key reason in identifying carers should be because we have a concern for their health, particularly those with the heaviest caring commitments. That is one in five of all carers, and that is more than 1 million people, which is just too many.

Those caring for more than 50 hours a week are twice as likely to suffer ill health, particularly those caring for a person with dementia or stroke. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) has just talked to us meaningfully and movingly about the impact of that caring role on her family. We want early identification and support for those carers so they can maintain their health and manage and sustain their caring role. I agree with my right hon. Friend that they should be fast-tracked for appointments. As hopefully we move towards integration and, beyond that, whole-person care, local authorities cannot be expected to act alone to identify and support carers.

As has been touched on in this debate, we also have to face the fact that the number of people receiving social care services is shrinking. In Salford this year, because of budget cuts, 1,000 people are going to lose their eligibility for social care services and 400 people who would have become eligible for care will not become eligible. The unpaid carers in those families will be taking on that substantial burden, yet, sadly, the GPs and doctors around them will not identify them, will not help them, will not make sure they get advice and support.

This Care Bill is the place to make the change, and I say to the Minister let us not wait another 15 years to make the change and place such a requirement on health bodies—and schools, universities, colleges and further education colleges in the case of young and student carers. Let them just have policies in place to identify carers and to provide support for them.