Local Government Responsibilities: Public Services

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the statutory and broader local government responsibilities for public services, including social care.

In the coming weeks and months, it is right that the Government focus on the fight against coronavirus. Local government will be on the frontline of that fight. Local services, from social care and public health to bin collections and now, most importantly, support for volunteering, will help us to overcome the challenge.

It is a time of uncertainty for many people across the country, and the Government need to provide as much certainty as they can. One thing we know is that older people, and those with underlying health conditions, are at greater risk from coronavirus than the rest of the population, as is clear from the social distancing guidelines issued for those groups this week. That means that, in the coming months, social care will be more important than ever because it not only helps to keep hospital beds clear for those who need them, but touches the lives of some of the most vulnerable. Care staff, therefore, will often be on the frontline of our efforts to stop the spread of the disease.

We are particularly concerned about home careworkers, who might provide care for up to a dozen older and disabled people in their homes every day. We want all necessary measures to be taken to protect care staff and the people they work with. As with the NHS, an important part of the solution is personal protective equipment and measures for infection control.

Care providers will face extra costs due to the need for more personal protective equipment and for enhanced cleaning of care homes and people’s own homes, and other measures to minimise the spread of infection—for example, zoning some staff in care homes. Last week, I raised with Ministers the fact that providers have faced great difficulty in obtaining personal protective equipment, and that also applies to infection control products, hand wash and disposable hand towels.

The care sector is extremely worried about being able to get essential supplies such as personal protective equipment. Commissioners can mitigate that by funding the extra costs and by helping providers to access personal protective equipment, perhaps by using some of their own contracts. The Government need to give guidance to local authorities and care providers, however, on the provision and use of personal protective equipment for careworkers and on whether help with accessing supplies can be given to reduce the spread of coronavirus.

We have just had a debate on statutory sick pay, which is particularly important for care staff, who are on the frontline of the outbreak. If they are ill, it is vital that they follow the public health advice and self-isolate, but the reality, as we heard, is that many care staff, like other staff, cannot afford to do so. Even if they are eligible for statutory sick pay, which we do not think they all will be, it is only £94 a week. The Minister needs to set out now what the Government will do to ensure that no careworker has to choose between doing the right thing and facing overwhelming financial problems.

Care providers are also facing increased cost pressures due to staff self-isolating or being off sick. It is right that statutory sick pay will start at day one, rather than day four, but that will increase employers’ liability for statutory sick pay. Requirements for workers to self-isolate will further increase financial pressures on employers. Given that, in virtually all cases, care providers will have to backfill sickness absence to ensure the continued delivery of support, that represents a real cost pressure on providers. With local authority budgets stretched, how can they support care providers to provide for extra statutory sick pay, the cost of backfilling care staff and the personal protective equipment and other materials that will be needed to get through the crisis?

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling case for why the Government should announce specific support for the social care sector. I noticed yesterday that the Chancellor did not make specific reference to the social care sector which, as my hon. Friend points out, is in a fragile state and under enormous pressures. Is it not time for specific support for the social care sector to be announced?

[Barbara Keeley]

I agree with my hon. Friend. It is great to hear that the NHS will get what it needs, but what about the social care sector?

We know, as my hon. Friend just said, that many care providers were already on the brink of collapse. Many will not have reserves to fall back on. I ask the Minister, as my hon. Friend just has: what will the Government do to sustain care provision and ensure that care providers are able to carry on delivering care at this time?

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[Dame Diana Johnson]

There are people who genuinely want to help and do their best for their community, but I am concerned to ensure that DBS checks are in place—an issue that has been alluded to—and also about infection control, which fits nicely with what my hon. Friend the shadow Minister has just said about some of the procedures that people may be asked to help with. There are real questions about the training and the infection control that need to be in place if we use volunteers.

[Barbara Keeley]

Very much so. I am following all the social media input from my constituents, and I am glad to see that people are very keen to help. However, we must be careful, because we are talking about very vulnerable people, often with complex care needs, and we do not want to put them into difficulties through the efforts of volunteers, so we need guidance on that point.

Let me turn to self-isolation. I had to self-isolate for five days last week, and I know it is not easy, but it will be particularly hard for people with anxiety disorders, who rely on a routine to cope. Both now and once we are on the other side of this, what support will the Government be offering to help address the mental health consequences of the pandemic and of self-isolation or shielding for long periods? I noticed in the media that there were programmes showing what is being done in Wuhan in China, with hundreds of counsellors talking to people on a phone helpline, talking them through the difficulties they were experiencing. I think we may have to be thinking about something like that. In particular, many older people are now looking at several months potentially locked down in their own home, so what can the Government do to ensure that those people do not become lonely and isolated, with all the mental health consequences that would cause?

The challenges facing local government over the coming months are not limited to social care. The Government finally published yesterday the public health grant for the next financial year. Between 2014-15 and 2019-20, budgets were cut by £870 million, although there has been an increase to the grant this year. While the publication of the allocations finally provides some certainty to local authorities, the reality is that their public health functions are likely to be focused on coronavirus for the foreseeable future. Public health services such as smoking cessation are vital to prevent people from acquiring long-term health conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which can make a future case of coronavirus more serious. Will the Minister commit to allocating further money to public health if local authorities need it to keep people safe during the crisis?

The other major area of concern is homelessness. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government announced a fund yesterday to help local authorities provide accommodation for homeless people who might have coronavirus, which is welcome, but given the scale of the homelessness crisis in this country, can the Minister tell us whether that fund will be topped up if needed? We do not want local authorities to have to ration support now because they think they might need some of it later.

I understand we are expecting a statement at 5 o’clock on education, and the Government are not yet closing schools—we may hear more at 5 o’clock—but we do see more teaching staff off work ill or self-isolating. Schools are being closed for certain years, and other closures look increasingly likely. I have seen that in my constituency. For many children, school is a place where they can get breakfast and free school meals. If children have to stay at home, they may go hungry. What support will be put in place to protect those children if schools are closed, whether that means providing food for them or ensuring that social services are monitoring their condition?

Lastly, I want to mention bins and waste collection. The safe handling of waste that could be contaminated by coronavirus will be a major challenge for public health and for the protection of the staff who work in that vital service. Will the Minister tell us what action is being taken alongside local authorities to ensure the continuity of waste collection services, given that the staff who work in those services will themselves be subject to illness and self-isolation?

We also need to think about council tax. If the Government are giving business rate relief for coronavirus, why not council tax relief for the general population? If people are out of work for an extended period, council tax is a big cost. Councils would need reimbursement for lost income, as they would with business rates. Additionally, we need councils to show some restraint with pursuing council tax arrears through the courts. Although loss of income for councils could be a very big issue at a time like this, depending on how long everything lasts, everything points to Government support and action for that. I should say to the Minister that I am happy to supply him with a list of all the questions I have asked, because it is very difficult for him to answer everything all in one go.

Coronavirus poses a unique challenge for this country. We will all need to work together to tackle it. The work that local authorities do will be central to addressing the crisis and will help to hold communities together as we do so. It will not be easy, and I am sure there are many issues we have not foreseen. I thank everyone working in local government and in social care and all our teachers and teaching staff, because they are a vital frontline service. I hope the Minister can reassure the House that local authorities will get all the help they need in the weeks and months ahead to tackle this crisis and to carry on providing the services that people rely on every day.

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[Luke Hall]

I thank the hon. Lady for putting that point on the record. She is absolutely right to do so. I very much hope that we will outline imminently the steps that we are looking at taking to support councils further.

Yesterday, the Chancellor announced in the House a series of measures to support communities in response to the crisis. The funding he announced amounted to more than £330 billion of financial support, equivalent to 15% of UK GDP. The £10,000 grants to small businesses that are eligible for small business rate relief and the £25,000 grants to retail, hospitality and leisure businesses operating from smaller premises will no doubt help to alleviate pressure on local businesses across the country, but we understand the pressures that are about to come. The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will write to all local authorities in the coming hours to set out how exactly those are to be delivered and the mechanisms by which they can be administered.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am interested to hear that. My concern is that my council, Hull City Council, is under enormous pressure trying to deal with the surge that it seems we are about to see with covid-19. Will local authorities receive additional resources to allow them to do all the things that the Government are asking them to do to support the business sector? Are councils getting sufficient money to enable them to do that?

[Luke Hall]

I am sorry to give the hon. Lady a similar answer to the one I gave the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), but we will outline a package of support very shortly. I can assure her that that guidance will be out by the end of tomorrow. I very much hope that by that time her local authority will have security to start financial planning.

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[Luke Hall]

My hon. Friend makes a very important and sensible point, and I will make sure that that is given some further thought. I thank him for raising it in the debate today.

One of the questions the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South raised was about PPE, and she was right to do so. We need to make sure that the care sector has the PPE that it needs. I would like to update the House that free distribution of fluid-repellent facemasks from the pandemic flu stock will start today, with every care home and every care provider receiving at least 300 facemasks that will be distributed through the usual channels. It will take seven days to distribute the full amount, but it is a good start to make sure that people have the PPE that they need. We are of course also thinking about beyond next week, and we are working rapidly with the wholesalers to ensure the longer-term supply of all the aspects of PPE, including gloves, aprons, face masks and hand sanitiser, which the hon. Lady also raised.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

My issue is about the volunteers, and I wonder whether the Government have given any thought to removing the charge for Disclosure and Barring Service checks to hopefully speed the process up so that the cost is not incurred, to help to get the volunteers to where we need them to be.

[Luke Hall]

I reassure the hon. Lady that we are looking at speed and depth at all these issues to make sure that we get the approach right. Several hon. Members have rightly highlighted the fact that we are talking about protecting some of the most vulnerable people in our society, so of course we want to get that balance right. We are considering in detail how that is best achieved, but I will absolutely make sure that that point is taken away.

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[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I would like to start by commending the work that our local councils are doing in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Faced with an unprecedented set of challenges across social care, education, children’s services, housing and homelessness, they are providing access to advice and support for many people who are distressed, worried and facing hardship as a result of the public health and economic calamity we are seeing, while sustaining day-to-day services such as bin collections, parks and libraries. Our councils are doing that in the context of 10 years of unprecedented cuts to their budgets and a total absence of coherent strategy for local government from central Government.

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee observed during the last Parliament that there has not been any assessment from central Government of the responsibilities of local government across its statutory and non-statutory functions and no objective assessment of the resources needed to fulfil the task at hand. Instead, our councils have been cut to the bone. Both my councils have lost more than 60% of the funding they received from central Government in grant. They have been forced to raise council tax, which is regressive and hits the poorest residents hardest, while demands on their core statutory services, adult social care and children’s services have continued to increase, and the need for housing and homelessness services has spiralled as a direct consequence of the welfare policies of a decade of Tory Governments.

In that context, the shift to reliance on business rates is of grave concern. Business rates have been the Government’s only game in town for local government, and we now face an economic calamity that may result in business rates revenue simply draining away. It is imperative that the Government come forward with proposals for how councils will be supported to sustain services in the context of the risk of business rates collapsing. Our councils are stepping up to play their part in multiple different ways, as the closeness and proximity of their relationship to communities make them uniquely placed to do so, but there is a lack of resilience across all our public services. After the last decade, that is completely predictable and therefore completely inexcusable.

I turn to a couple of areas of public services that are responding to the crisis as they relate to our councils, the first of which is social care. Our social care system was in crisis before the coronavirus pandemic struck. About 1 million people eligible for social care are not receiving any, and the sector needs about £3.5 billion of additional funding just to meet additional needs. Across the country, councils of all political persuasions are struggling to deliver the social care services that local residents need, and private contractors continue to hand contracts back to councils.

Now, social care workers are at the frontline of the response to covid-19, caring for some of the most vulnerable residents and working hard to take on additional caseloads as hospitals work urgently to discharge people to free up bed space needed for the pandemic, yet many social care workers are paid the minimum wage and remain on zero-hours contracts.

Last week, 100 parliamentarians from both Houses and many political parties joined me in writing to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to ask that social care workers be placed on the same footing as NHS workers with regard to sick pay during the coronavirus pandemic. NHS workers and contractors have been guaranteed full pay if they are ill or need to self-isolate, but no such commitment has been made to social care workers. It is vital that low-paid workers, whose jobs bring them into contact with many of the people most vulnerable to covid-19, are not forced to make an impossible choice between taking action to protect the safety of those in their care or putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their family’s head.

I have not received a response to my letter and, despite raising the issue in the Chamber, there has been no indication from the Government that they understand the urgency of the issue or that any action is being taken. Lives will be lost if low-paid, workers with precarious jobs are forced to make impossible choices. I hope that in responding to the debate, the Minister will provide a definitive commitment to social care workers in response to covid-19.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. On that point if, as seems likely, schools in England are going to close in the next few days, childcare will need to be provided to allow key workers who have been identified in the NHS to carry on working, perhaps through skeleton schools. Should that also be used for key workers who provide social care in local authorities, so that their children are part of any provision that is made nationally?

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Social care workers, together with healthcare workers, are at the frontline of the crisis. They must be offered every support possible to enable them to keep working throughout.

More widely, there are grave concerns about the extra capacity that will be needed in the social care sector in response to the crisis. Earlier this week, I visited Turney School in my constituency, an outstanding school for children with special educational needs aged four to 19. Of the more than 130 children at Turney School, 90% are eligible for free school meals, many have multiple and complex needs, and most have a diagnosis of autism. If, as we hear, schools across the country are likely to close shortly, there will be an urgent and immediate need for additional social care support for Turney pupils and many thousands of children with special needs across the country.

Schools such as Turney fulfil not just an educational role, but a social, emotional and respite role for children and their families. Many Turney families live in overcrowded, poor-quality accommodation. Self-isolation in such circumstances will be intolerable and the need for social care support will be critical. The same is true for all children in receipt of free school meals and those who are potentially at risk at home. The social care sector will need to step up to meet the needs of our most vulnerable children.

Finally, in relation to social care, I raise the issue of access to personal protective equipment. Vulnerable people with covid-19 will still need support with personal care, and no one should be made to put their own health at risk in the course of doing their job. I welcome the Minister’s comments on PPE, but will he set out the detailed plans to ensure that all social care workers, whatever setting they are in and whoever their employer is, will have access to PPE? There is serious concern about the impact of the crisis on autistic people and people with learning disabilities, more than 2,000 of whom are still trapped in inappropriate hospital accommodation. As hospitals restrict visitor access, and as the emergency legislation contains provisions to short cut detention under the Mental Health Act 1983, what steps are the Government taking to uphold the human rights of autistic people and people with learning disabilities and to ensure that community services being stretched even further do not result in more people reaching crisis point and being detained in hospital?

The second area of council services I want to raise today is housing and the homelessness service. Homelessness and housing need have risen dramatically during the past decade of Tory austerity. A failure to fund the building of new, genuinely affordable social housing or regulate private renting, combined with cuts to welfare and the disgraceful five-week universal credit wait have driven up homelessness.

I was proud during the last Parliament to be a co-sponsor of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, and a recent report by Crisis concludes that the new legislation has been making a difference, but London Councils has made it clear that the level of funding provided by the Government was far from adequate, estimating that the amount that London Councils alone needed to implement the Homelessness Reduction Act was similar to the total national funding the Government made available.

Now we face two additional challenges: the first is the vulnerability of rough sleepers to coronavirus and the impossibility of self-isolating when someone is on the streets. There has been no Government response on this issue. Will the Minister say what arrangements are being made to contain the spread of covid-19 among rough sleepers? Will funding be made available for emergency accommodation that is suitable for self-isolation in addition to the funding that has already been made available to tackle the endemic problem of homelessness, which existed prior to this pandemic?

Secondly, the economic crisis that threatens to engulf our country has the potential to increase homelessness further. The lack of attention to the predicament of private renters has been disgraceful, but without that thousands of people will find their homes at risk. Will the Minister commit to ensuring that no one will lose their home as a consequence of coronavirus?

Our councils are now being asked to administer large amounts of the financial support that the Government are providing in response to this crisis, yet they have not been provided with any guidance, and they are not being supported with additional capacity. Local authorities that have been cut to the bone might find additional financial administration very challenging, so will the Minister set out what support is being provided to councils to ensure that they are able to administer hardship funds and business support without delay and without impacting on other services?

Across many areas of responsibility, local government is at the frontline of this unprecedented public health and economic crisis. It is the job of our councils to ensure that the burdens of the disease do not fall on the poorest and most vulnerable in our communities. It is the job of central Government to ensure that they are properly funded, equipped and supported to do so.