Care Workers

Helen Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) on securing the debate, and on the fact that he has pursued the matters in question for some time now, making progress in his own patch by raising them here and, I am sure, back in Oxfordshire. I agree with a lot of his remarks and want to underscore some of the points that he made, but I also want to draw out some opportunities to make progress with this terrible, thorny and long stuck-in-the-mud issue.

The Government published a White Paper in 2012, which acknowledged in stark terms the contracting practice that turns care workers into clock-watchers and that sees their function as purely a transaction in which they turn up, perform a set of tasks and leave—with far too little time given to them even for that. The White Paper made it clear that such commissioning practice had to end. We now have the vehicle by which that can happen. Parliament passed the Care Act 2014, which broadly speaking was supported by all parties. Recently—I am sure that the Minister will expand on this later—guidance covering the matter was issued for local authorities. I want to dwell briefly on that first. It is important to remind the House of it today, and to show how assurance checks will be applied to it, to ensure that it bites on what local authorities do.

The guidance states:

“When commissioning services, local authorities should assure themselves and have evidence that contract terms, conditions and fee levels for care and support services are appropriate to provide the delivery of the agreed care packages with agreed quality of care, that will not undermine the wellbeing of people who receive care and support, or compromise the service provider’s ability to meet the statutory obligations to pay at least minimum wages and provide effective training and development of staff.”

Everything that the right hon. Member for Oxford East has called for is encapsulated in that guidance statement, but how will local authorities assure themselves that it happens? Clearly, part of the answer is what they put in the contract, and part must be their contract monitoring. Another part is the local authority’s proactive role to assure itself and its citizens that the national minimum wage, at least, is being paid.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman remember supporting a Local Government Finance Bill that imposed the most draconian cuts on authorities whose populations were most in need of care? If he wants all this to happen, the finance must follow through.

[Paul Burstow]

I will come to finance, but I hope that when we have contributions from Front Benchers there will be some indication of commitments for the future and of what has been done so far. For many years under the previous and current Administrations, local government settlements have left local authorities in a difficult position when funding social care. No one disputes that, but we should be honest about the fact that that problem did not start in 2010, although the incoming Administration had quite a bit of difficulty in dealing with the deficit.

I want to draw attention to 15-minute contracts, which are another aspect of this debate that relates to the guidance. During the passage of the Care Bill, hon. Members on both sides of the House, particularly in the Public Bill Committee, were very clear with Ministers that we expected the guidance to be clear on that point, as it is. It says:

“For example, short home-care visits of 15 minutes or less would not routinely be appropriate for people with intimate care needs”,

and goes on to list what that would mean in practice. I hope that the Minister will explain how he intends to ensure that local authorities are both supported and encouraged to ensure that the guidance is put in place.

I wanted to speak in this debate because at a constituency surgery about a month ago, a home care worker came to see me wanting to talk through what was happening to them and the people they worked with concerning their time sheets and pay. They have to pay for work-related calls on their own mobile phone, and for fuel in the car that the organisation provides. That might be thought to be a good thing, but I was told that the care workers have to take the car to be MOT-ed, and if it fails they are encouraged to drive it without. There is some pretty shoddy practice going on, and care workers are at the front.

The right hon. Member for Oxford East was right to highlight the issue of flu jabs, and I hope the Minister will say what is intended. The guidance is clear: health and social care workers should have access to the jab, but if it is not provided free to social care workers, it is likely that it will not be widely taken up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I rise to make a brief contribution to the debate. The issues have been set out admirably by my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) and others. I apologise in advance for the fact that I cannot stay for the wind-ups.

We are facing a scandalous situation. The people who do some of the most difficult jobs in our society are not even reaching the minimum wage because of the scams that are being perpetrated in the care sector. They are not paid for travel, they are on zero-hours contracts, and other scams are perpetrated against them. When I talk to care workers in my constituency, I see that they are decent people who just want to do a decent week’s work, and I can see what that means. They have to rush between appointments, and they feel guilty about not being able to spend time with their clients. They believe that the care they are giving is not of the quality that people should receive.

Care is not just about getting somebody washed and dressed, or giving them their breakfast; it is what it says it is. Care is about spending time with people, listening to them and talking about the problems they face. It says much about our care workers that, as well as worrying about their own wages, as they are entitled to do, they worry about the impact on their clients of what is, frankly, a rotten system.

Let us consider what really happens. If care workers are on zero-hours contracts, they are paid only for their actual appointments, and not for their travelling time. It is estimated that 220,000 people are not being paid the minimum wage. That has been allowed to happen for far too long—those 220,000 people cannot meet their bills at the end of the week, despite working full time. Does the Minister honestly understand what that means? I do, because I remember it from my earlier life. It means running out of money by the end of the week and relying on friends or family to help out. Friends and family bring things saying, “Well, I got it as a two-for-one offer,” or, “This was on sale,” but people know they were not and that their friends and family are trying to spare their feelings. Zero-hours contracts mean that it is a crisis when a child needs a new pair of shoes or grows out of their coat. That is the position that we inflict on people who do some of the most difficult jobs in our society by caring for the elderly and the disabled—the most vulnerable. I suspect that most of us in this room could never do those jobs, except for my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), who has actually done it.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs found that nearly half of the firms it inspected in the care sector were not paying the minimum wage. Very few of those firms have even been named and shamed. How many of them have actually been prosecuted? As the Minister said, they are criminals. In what other sector of life would we say to a criminal, “We know you are doing it, and we would like you to stop. We are not actually taking you to court, and we are not prosecuting you. We know you are a burglar, but will you just give it up?” We do that with the minimum wage, which is an absolute disgrace. The Government must take responsibility. Yes, some local councils must take responsibility, too. It is true that local councils do not always monitor the contracts that they give out, do not ensure that people are paid properly and do not check workers’ wages, but that is not surprising given the situation in which they find themselves.

It is all very well for the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) to tell us about the duties he imposed on local councils, but if we will the end, we have to will the means. It is a fact that the councils that face the most draconian cuts under the Government’s Local Government Finance Act 2012 are also the councils that have the highest levels of long-term disability and the biggest need for social care.

If the Government want to impose duties on local councils, they have an obligation to ensure that those councils have money available to meet those duties, otherwise councils will simply put the responsibility elsewhere and fail to meet their own. We know what happens when such systems are in place, and we know what happens when care workers cannot spend enough time with their clients: health problems go undetected, and people’s feelings of loneliness and isolation increase, driving up mental health problems. There are more falls and more admissions to hospital. There is a cost to the people concerned, and to the NHS, because a good care system cannot be run on the cheap. It requires properly trained, properly paid and properly supervised staff. The most vulnerable people in our society deserve no less. The Government have been trying to run care on the cheap, on the backs of dedicated workers who are being treated shamefully, and it is time that that stopped.

[John Robertson (in the Chair)]

I thank hon. Members for their use of time.