Caring Responsibilities

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore]

That is clear example of what is happening up and down the country not only for older people who need care but for older carers themselves, who have very specific needs. Half of the 6 million people who are providing unpaid care in the UK are aged over 50. In England in 2010, nearly 1 million people aged 65 and over were providing unpaid care to a partner, a family member, who might be younger than them, or some other person. The largest number were aged between 65 and 74, but there were nearly 50,000 people over the age of 85 who were giving substantial amounts of care. A quarter of all carers aged 75 and over provided 50 or more hours of unpaid care per week. Carers over retirement age are a particularly vulnerable group because they tend to have health issues themselves. Such people say that they really have no retirement or that they have not been able to enjoy the retirement that they had expected.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. She refers to the age of carers. The survey to which she alluded earlier indicated that about half of all carers are in poor health. We often use the expression “a time bomb”, and it can be a cliché, but here we have a living example of a literal time bomb. If 50% of carers are in poor health themselves, we will, within a few short years, have a double whammy of a problem to deal with—the people who are being cared for and the carers themselves.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. That is exactly the point that I was trying to make. The carers face not only health problems, but financial difficulties. Carers over retirement age do not receive a carer’s allowance even though they incur additional costs. They could use additional funds to buy some respite time that they might not otherwise get. They often become cut-off and isolated because they are not able to get out of the house to enjoy the sorts of social activities that enable people to live healthier and more fruitful lives.

Furthermore, there is an anomaly that needs to be resolved. Those on a low income who are over retirement age claim carer’s allowance, but they do not get paid it. Instead, they get access to a carer’s premium in pension credit. We have about 250,000 carers in that category. It is very confusing because they are claiming a benefit that they do not receive in order to get access to a completely different benefit. Hopefully, that is something that the current Government, with their zeal for simplifying the benefit system, will move very quickly to address.

As we debate this subject in Westminster Hall, the main Chamber is considering the Welfare Reform Bill on Report. Many colleagues who would have liked to be here are taking part in that debate. They know how important the Bill is to carers as well as to other people. The proposed changes to benefits are a big worry for carers. At present, carer’s allowance can be claimed if the person being cared for qualifies for either the middle or higher rate component of the disability living allowance. The successor benefit, the personal independence payment, will only have two bands of the daily living component, which is the equivalent of the care component. What is still not clear is how eligibility will work under the new benefit. Will it apply only if the cared-for person receives the new higher rate? How many people will lose eligibility for carer’s allowance as a result of these changes? In the Bill Committee, the Minister was unable to give us an answer to that question. However, Disability Alliance has calculated that to achieve even £1 billion of cuts to DLA—the Government’s forward projections expect there to be a £2 billion saving overall—there could be a risk to 643,000 people who currently receive the lowest rate and to a further 100,000 people on the middle or higher rate.

We are told by the Government that we cannot assume that everyone who currently gets the lower rate of DLA will lose out in the benefit changes because the new test will be very different to the old one, which leaves a question mark over an undetermined number of people. We cannot assume that all the losers in the new personal independence payment regime will be people who do not have a corresponding link to the carer’s allowance.