National Carers Week
Debate between Helen Whately and Barbara Keeley(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) for securing the debate, for her powerful opening speech and for all she does as chair of the APPG on carers. This week is Carers Week—a chance to recognise and focus on carers—but as every carer knows, if you are a carer, every week is carers week. I pay tribute to carers and young carers across the country for what they do, caring for loved ones, whether it is their mum or dad, brother or sister, a neighbour or their child, who will often be grown up, day in, day out, all year round.
Over 4 million people in England are unpaid carers. For some, caring may be a few hours a week helping a relative or neighbour with things they cannot do themselves or providing companionship. For others—in fact, nearly one in three, according to the latest census—caring means over 50 hours each week looking after someone. It is not just a full-time job, albeit unpaid, but how they are spending their lives.
My hon. Friend drew on her expertise, as a former Care Minister, and her personal experience. She spoke about how few families are untouched by caring responsibilities, about the sacrifices that carers make and how they are driven by love, but also the problem of exhaustion and burn-out for carers. She talked about the importance of identifying carers, especially young carers. She spoke powerfully about children with experience of dialling 999 because of a parent needing an ambulance but not telling anyone because of the stigma, particularly due to a parent’s mental health needs.
My hon. Friend asked whether we could build on some of the things we did for carers in the pandemic. I know, as I was Care Minister at the time, how incredibly hard the pandemic was for many carers, how isolated many felt and how many felt they did not have the support they needed. I know how difficult it was to work out how we could support carers during the pandemic, but we managed to do some things, such as identifying carers we prioritise for the covid vaccine. I will take away her request to look at how we can build on the things we did in the pandemic.
I know that the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) is a committed campaigner for social care and carers; we often speak in the same debates. She spoke about some of the financial difficulties for carers, the importance of cross-Government commitment to carers, and carers needing breaks and time off from caring.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) spoke about her personal experience of caring for her father. She talked about the loneliness and isolation but how cricket helped, which made many of us smile. She talked about young carers, how the sacrifices they make are often not appreciated and the long-term effects of being a young carer.
I pay tribute to hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for her very important work in steering the Carer’s Leave Bill through Parliament. She spoke about things that employers can do more broadly to support carers and the opportunity of being a Carer Positive employer. The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said that he chairs a local carers group, and I give him credit for that, whether or not it is a Labour group. That is a very important thing to do, bringing carers together to support one another and listening to what help they need. He spoke about the difficulty for carers in getting assessments. The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) spoke about the cost of living and the cost of heating homes for carers, particularly in his constituency, where many carers are off grid and use heating oil.
We also heard briefly from the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) and for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell). That level of Back-Bench interest in this topic on a quiet Thursday in Parliament shows how strongly people feel, rightly, about the need for support for carers in our constituencies. We also heard from those on the shadow Front Benches, the hon. Members for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) and for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows).
I know, from my own experience and from my family, that caring is something we do because it feels the right thing to do. We might not have a choice or not feel we have a choice, but nor can we imagine not doing it—not caring for the person we love. For many people, it is something that just happens to them: they become a carer without really realising it. Suddenly, they are spending hours caring—perhaps all their waking hours, and often in the night as well—without realising that they have become a carer, and without knowing that they might need support or, indeed, that they could get it. That is why recognising carers and helping them recognise themselves is important in its own right. There is a good reason why recognising and supporting carers in the community is the theme of this year’s Carers Week.
Local authorities, the NHS, schools, universities, all public services, and indeed companies need to continue to improve how unpaid carers are identified, recognised and supported in our communities. This Carers Week, I have had meetings with more than 30 unpaid carers, young adult carers and representatives from unpaid carers’ organisations, and both as Care Minister and in my life outside politics, I meet carers all the time—remarkable carers who have shared their stories with me. Those are so often stories of how hard it is to be a carer, although it is also really good to hear some positive stories. For instance, some employers are really supportive of carers and their caring responsibilities. However, sadly, that is not always the case; in fact, just on Tuesday, one carer told me that she is thinking about giving up her job due to a lack of support. Many hon. Members have spoken about that issue today.
On the important issue of juggling employment and caring, I want to highlight the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, which received Royal Assent on 24 May. Eligible unpaid carers will soon be able to take a week’s flexible unpaid leave each year. I am so pleased to see that Bill pass into law to help carers who are juggling work and caring.
This week, I also spoke to another carer about the challenges they are facing in getting the professional care and support they need. That is one reason why the work we are doing on reforming the adult social care workforce is really important. I say to carers, “Please keep on speaking up. Keep on telling your stories, for other carers and to make sure people know what it is to be a carer. None of you are alone.”
In April, we published our reform plan, “Next steps to put People at the Heart of Care”. The enormous contribution of unpaid carers is reflected in that plan, and in writing it, we were thinking about carers as well as those they care for. This financial year, £327 million of the better care fund has been earmarked to provide short breaks and respite services for carers, as well as additional advice and support. We are finalising plans for how we will deliver the additional sum of up to £25 million that we committed to carers in the White Paper, and I will be sharing those plans shortly. I know it is taking time, but I do really want to get it right.
The Health and Care Act 2022 includes provisions for the Care Quality Commission to assess the performance of local authority delivery of adult social care duties. That duty has gone live as of 1 April with our new assurance framework, which will provide a clear assessment of how local authorities are meeting their statutory duties, including those relating to carers, such as whether local authorities are undertaking their assessment of carers’ need for support and then meeting the needs that are identified. That will address one of the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport, along with other Members: how we make sure carers get the assessments to which they have a statutory right, as well as the support they are identified as needing.
We are working with NHS England to streamline the ways in which unpaid carers are recorded in GPs’ health records, and we have written to all GPs in England to communicate improvements to how that is carried out. Crucially, that identification of individuals with caring obligations extends to young carers. Questions designed to identify children and students caring for family members have been added to the school census, and that important data has been published today. We are also making progress on our plans to transform social care data, better joining up the care to people, including support to unpaid carers as well as those they care for.
Meanwhile, we are taking steps to design a new survey to capture the wide range of experiences and needs of unpaid carers across England, and to commission a valuation of the support provided to unpaid carers through the better care fund, including carer breaks and respite. It might seem obvious, but different carers want different things, so it is right that we take steps to understand and build the evidence base of what works and what matters when supporting carers.
Helen Whately
I am really sorry, but I have but a minute left—Madam Deputy Speaker has confirmed that. However, to address the points that the hon. Lady made in her speech, I assure her that not a penny has been taken away from funding for adult social care; in fact, more money is going into adult social care, thanks to the record funding of up to £7.5 billion over two years that we announced in the autumn statement. A crucial part of our adult social care workforce reforms is our reform of the professional care workforce: developing social care as a career for the professional workforce, developing the career pathway and investing in qualifications for that workforce. That is very important to unpaid carers, because the top issue often raised with me by the unpaid carers I talk to is the difficulty of accessing professional care.
To close, I want to say as Minister for Social Care that I care, and I will continue to champion carers’ needs as part of the work I do across Government. I am delighted to announce that I will be convening a roundtable of Ministers to work together across our Departments to identify, recognise and support unpaid carers. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have made contributions on this important topic today, as well as Carers UK for its work this Carers Week and its year-round advocating for carers, and the other campaign groups involved in this week, including Age UK, the MND Association, Rethink Mental Illness, the Lewy Body Society and Oxfam. Finally, I say thank you to all carers.
Covid Pandemic: Testing of Care Home Residents
Debate between Helen Whately and Barbara Keeley(1 year, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Helen Whately
My right hon. and learned Friend is exactly right; we are having a public inquiry and the Government are fully co-operating with it so that it has all the information required to look through all that happened, to investigate it and, rather than trying to score political points, to truly learn lessons for the benefit of the country.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
On 2 April 2020, I wrote to the former Health and Social Care Secretary, jointly with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), highlighting the urgent need for testing in care homes for staff and residents and, in particular, for patients being discharged from hospital. I knew at the time, as did other colleagues, that without that testing, care homes in my constituency and those across the country were suffering a heavy toll of deaths of residents. Indeed, one of our care home managers died of covid in my constituency.
Furthermore, at a session of the Select Committee on Health and Social Care in July 2021, I asked the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) why the Government had not taken up the offer from care providers of facilities to isolate people discharged from hospital before admitting them to care homes. He told me that he did not know anything about the letter, despite it being sent by Care England. Will the Minister now admit that the Department and Ministers failed to understand and to involve social care in the key decisions about the covid pandemic, and ignored letters offering help that could have saved lives?
Helen Whately
The hon. Lady is right about the importance of testing. It is a view that she has and that I had at the time; some of the exchanges will show how I, as Social Care Minister, was arguing very hard for testing for care homes, as Members would expect. I know that other Ministers and other people were arguing for the things that they had oversight of. Ultimately, of course, the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister had to make decisions, based every step of the way, clearly, on the scientific advice on these things, as we did. To that point, during the course of the pandemic, as the capacity allowed, millions of tests were distributed to care homes. As I have said, as the capacity increased, care homes were prioritised in that process. Specifically to address one of the points she made, let me say that the guidance set out on 15 April was not only that everyone discharged from hospital to a care home should be tested, but that they should be isolated.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Whately and Barbara Keeley(1 year, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about patients spending too long in acute care in his own hospital. We know this is affecting other people around the country. I am very happy to meet him and I would very much like to visit his hospital and speak to his NHS, the local authority and other stakeholders to ensure we can improve the situation.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Tony Hickmott is an autistic man who was detained in an in-patient unit for 22 years, often in near total seclusion, against his wishes and those of his parents, Pam and Roy. Tony now has his own home in the community, but the NHS spent £11 million on his detention in the last nine years after doctors considered him fit for discharge. Can the Minister comment on the wasted years Tony and his family spent fighting to get him free? What will she do to release the 2,000 other autistic people and people with learning disabilities detained in in-patient settings who would receive far more effective care in the community?
Helen Whately
The hon. Member raises Tony’s individual case, which is very hard to hear about. She and I know there are too many others in this situation. She will know, too, that I listened to this when I was formerly a Health Minister. It is a difficult problem to solve, but we should absolutely continue to work with the NHS, the Care Quality Commission and local authorities to ensure people who are not benefiting from being in in-patient settings are able to get the care and support they need in the community.
NHS Update
Debate between Helen Whately and Barbara Keeley(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and it is why I am working closely with my hon. Friend the Minister for Health, who is leading oversight of the elective recovery work. We are very much discussing how we can make sure that, with the pressure of looking after people with covid, with winter approaching and with elective recovery, we are looking after our workforce through this period. Of course, looking ahead to the winter, it is important that people get not only the covid vaccination, if they are eligible, but the flu vaccination, so we can try to have as little flu as possible in what may be a challenging winter ahead.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]
Although it is welcome that the Government have launched their new autism strategy, they will need to do more than that to ensure that the 2,000 autistic people and people with learning disabilities currently detained in inappropriate in-patient units can move back into the community. For 10 years since the Winterbourne View scandal, the Government have failed to invest in the high-quality community services needed, and they have done nothing to stop the flow of people into in-patient units from the community.
Will the Minister commit to the funding needed to support all current in-patients in the community? Can she say when the Government will finally bring forward reforms to our social care system so that it provides the support autistic people and people with learning disabilities need?
Helen Whately
The hon. Lady refers to the importance of making sure that only those who really benefit from in-patient treatment should be in in-patient units. We know that is often not the case for autistic people, and sometimes those with learning disabilities, who are in-patients. We are working through our “building the right support” programme to reduce the number of in-patients, and we will continue to do so.
Social Care Reform
Debate between Helen Whately and Barbara Keeley(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. At the heart of care is the workforce. They are the individuals who are providing the care and who make the difference day in, day out for those who need their important care. Absolutely, I want to make sure that we have the workforce across social care. We need to ensure we have the training there and greater career progression opportunities for those who work in social care.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]
It has been reported that the Prime Minister is in favour of finally implementing the cap on care costs legislated for in 2014. While that would be welcome, it would do nothing to support working age adults with a disability to live independently, nothing for the 1.9 million older people with unmet needs and nothing to improve pay and conditions for care staff. Does the Minister recognise that a cap on care costs alone does not go far enough, and can she confirm that further measures to deal with these other needs will be part of any reforms?
Helen Whately
I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me if I am not drawn on specific models of funding or paying for care, but the Government and I recognise that we have on the one hand the challenge of catastrophic costs and the problems some people face of having to sell their home to pay for their care, which many Members have mentioned already today, but also we have the other part of the system, which is those who receive care funded by the state. Many of them are of working age, as well as there being older people. She is right: in our social care reform, we need to look across the breadth of the system.
Covid-19: Social Care
Debate between Helen Whately and Barbara Keeley(3 years ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Minister for Care (Helen Whately)
I will do so. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I wish the shadow Minister’s mother a happy birthday today.
I thank the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) for securing this debate on social care and covid and for the work they do as co-chairs of the APPG on adult social care, bringing the sector together and being a voice for it in Parliament and beyond.
As the hon. Lady and my right hon. Friend said—as, in fact, all speakers today have said, and as we all know —the pandemic has been cruel to those who receive social care, especially those living in care homes around the world, here in the UK, and indeed in England. Sadly, both residents and care staff have lost their lives, and each one will be missed by friends, family, and those who love them. I thank those working in social care—staff in care homes, home care workers, those supporting people in extra care and supported living, personal assistants, social workers, and millions of unpaid carers as well—for all they have done during the pandemic, and are continuing to do now, to care for those who rely on their care and could not live without it.
Members have spoken about the many challenges the sector has faced during the pandemic. I want to outline some of the things that the Government have done to support social care, with a level of intervention—a level of support—that is unprecedented for social care, and rightly so in the circumstances of the pandemic. First, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood spoke about the extra costs that social care has faced during the pandemic. We have put in £1.8 billion of specific, ring-fenced covid funding for social care during the pandemic, including £1.3 billion for infection control measures, and providers have told me what a huge difference this support has made to them and how essential it has been all the way through the pandemic.
Secondly, the Government have stepped in to provide PPE to the social care sector, and PPE has been available free for many months via a portal to meet the covid needs of social care providers on demand. Over 2 billion items of PPE have been supplied to the social care sector, and the Government have committed to continue PPE supply through to March 2022.
Thirdly, social care has been prioritised as our testing volumes have increased. Last summer, we introduced weekly polymerase chain reaction testing for care home staff, and since December, that has been supplemented by twice-weekly lateral flow device tests. That has made a difference, because we can not only quickly identify when a staff member may be covid positive but, through the introduction of the LFD tests, we are able to identify whether a member of staff is covid positive before they set foot in the care home. During this time, we have sent out over 28 million PCR tests and 47 million LFD tests to the social care sector across care homes, home care, supported living, and other parts of the sector. We have also made rapid tests available to visitors, supported by £288 million of funding for the staff costs involved in that testing, to help people see loved ones. I will say more about visiting in a moment.
Fourthly, many hon. Members have spoken about the impact of the pandemic on the social care workforce. Again, we cannot thank care workers enough for what they have done, and how they have gone the extra mile time and again. Through the virtual visits I have made to care homes and the conversations I have had, I have seen what staff have done, particularly to step in and support residents at a time when visiting has been restricted.
I also know the difficult experiences that some care workers have been through. We have specifically advised care providers to use some of the funding for paid sick leave for social care staff who have had to isolate due to covid. We have also put in place mental health support for the social care workforce, seeking as far as we can to mirror the mental health support offer to NHS staff, and we will continue to see how we can support staff through the mental health impacts of the pandemic.
As hon. Members have said, we know that there are workforce shortages within social care, and at times covid has made that harder, with staff rightly taking time to isolate. Recognising that, we provided £120 million of funding for the workforce capacity fund, which was passed to local authorities to boost staffing for the sector during the second wave.
To increase the voice of the social care sector and to give further leadership—particularly clinical leadership—to the social care workforce, we appointed the fantastic Deborah Sturdy as the chief nurse for social care. She is already doing brilliant work with the sector and the workforce, and contributing to plans for the workforce of the future.
To increase our understanding of the social care situation on the ground, we created a social care data dashboard as a single point of information for the system. We came into the pandemic with relatively small amounts of timely data about social care; as hon. Members know, it is a highly fragmented system, with over 25,000 different providers. We have built a way of having up-to-date information and self-reported data from providers, which has given us truly valuable information to which local authorities also have access. It gives a good sense of what has been happening on the ground.
We have also established a regional assurance team for social care, as this is now the Department of Health and Social Care. They are a group of people with great experience in the sector who have been able to reach out during the pandemic, working with local authorities, directors of public health, providers and others, to understand some of the challenges being faced and provide more localised support.
On visiting, on many occasions we have developed an iterated visiting guidance, responding to requests from the sector for a steer on how to manage the challenge of wanting people in care homes to be visited while acknowledging the risks to residents of more people coming through the door. We have drawn a huge amount of clinical guidance from the deputy chief medical officer of Public Health England on how we can enable safe visiting. Clearly, we have substantial caution because we know the great risks to care home residents when covid gets in and how difficult it is to stop an outbreak from spreading through a care home, even with the PPE, the testing and the other things I have outlined. One reason why we introduced visitor testing was to reduce that risk.
Since 12 April, care homes have been able to open up to two visitors, and the essential care giver scheme addresses particular need. I look forward to care homes being able to continue to open up, step by step, through the combination of lower infection rates and vaccination, to enable people to once again spend much more time with their loved ones.
Several hon. Members spoke about visits out. I recognise the importance of both having visitors at care homes and being able to leave—to go out and about. This applies to older people, but particularly to families who have relatives of working age in residential settings, who I have spoken to. Often, somebody of working age might come out every weekend to spend time with their mum and dad, and their family. Clearly, they have not been able to do that during the pandemic.
I ask other hon. Members with an interest in this subject to listen to the Joint Committee on Human Rights sitting held yesterday, when I was asked about this. With me was Dr Éamonn O’Moore from Public Health England, who explained in some detail, which we do not have time for today, the reason for the caution around visiting out and the clinical reasons for the requirement to isolate for 14 days on return. To respond to the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South, I should say that that is not the same as somebody coming from overseas to the UK and quarantining, because of the particular circumstances within care homes. There may be people who are very vulnerable. In the event that someone brings covid into the care home, that can lead to an outbreak, which can lead, sadly, to people dying. Therefore, rightly, the issue is taken seriously.
I assure colleagues that, as Dr O’Moore said to the Health and Social Care Committee yesterday, I have asked Public Health England to provide advice on how to make more visits possible—particularly those with lower risk, such as those outdoors—and on what could be done to reduce quarantine requirements afterwards. I am mindful of the May elections and of those who might want to vote in person.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford rightly said that vaccines are the answer to allowing more visiting and for much of life to come back to normal, for those who receive social care. We prioritised the social care sector for vaccinations—and particularly care homes, who were top of the list. The vaccine was offered to all care homes by the end of January, on time. Soon, all residents who can be vaccinated will have been offered their second dose.
The impact of vaccination is already being seen, with the rates of covid coming right down in care homes. There are still some outbreaks and I would caution those listening to the debate that the vaccine is not 100% effective. Many residents have had their second dose but others are still only on their first, and it is important in that situation that the precautions continue. For instance, we are continuing to urge care homes to make sure that staff use PPE and infection control measures, even when everyone has been vaccinated. However, there are far fewer outbreaks and the consequences are much less serious. I want to use this opportunity to thank the NHS vaccination teams, and the social care workforce, who have been involved in the tremendous and lifesaving effort to vaccinate so many thousands of people in social care.
Many hon. Members spoke about the importance of reform, and how the pandemic has shone a light on the social care sector and the need for reform. I truly welcome the support for reform among hon. Members who have taken part in the debate in this room and virtually. Some steps have begun, and I urge the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood to look again at some of the social care content in the health and social care White Paper, including the voice of social care in integrated care systems—and I agree with the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford that it is not just about a local authority voice, but the wider sector.
The White Paper also proposes the introduction of a new oversight and assurance system for social care, which I see as an important part of building on the experiences of the pandemic, to give us more oversight and the ability to drive quality and outcomes more strongly for those who receive social care. It also includes steps to support better use of data and data sharing for social care.
Those things are, however, just the beginning and we need to go further. We have committed to go further and to publishing a long-term plan for social care this year.
Barbara Keeley
As the Minister is talking about the White Paper, I wanted to point out that we have talked quite a lot about unpaid carers in the debate, but they are not mentioned once in the White Paper. Carers’ organisations took that in a bad way and felt that all the efforts that unpaid carers put in during the pandemic were not recognised at all. The Minister and the Health Secretary need to address that.
Helen Whately
The hon. Member makes a really important point, and I really appreciate how she has spoken about unpaid carers during this debate. I absolutely recognise the crucial role of unpaid carers, the things that unpaid carers do and the demands on and challenges for unpaid carers during the pandemic. I absolutely see unpaid carers as part of the breadth of the social care system that we must consider for the reforms as we go forward.
I very much welcomed the expertise, in the room and virtually, on social care reform. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford reminded us that the reform debate has been going on for nearly 25 years. He has extremely valuable experience. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) has great experience from local government and flagged the work of Sir Paul Carter, whom I know because he is the former leader of Kent County Council and I am a Kent MP. I will indeed be looking at the work that my hon. Friend mentioned. My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) called for a social care workforce strategy. Yes, absolutely, as part of the reform work, we need and plan to bring forward a strategy for the social care workforce.
I am conscious of the time and so that is probably as far as I can go today, but broadly, I truly welcome the support for social care reform expressed during this debate. I assure those in the room and all those listening to the debate that we are determined to seize this moment. We have supported social care at an unprecedented level during the pandemic; on the back of that, we are determined to bring forward the reform that we know social care needs.
NHS Staff Pay
Debate between Helen Whately and Barbara Keeley(3 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Helen Whately
Absolutely. We submitted our evidence to the pay review body last week, which included the affordable pay envelope from the Government. The Pay Review Body will look at a wide range of evidence, and we will look at its response when it comes back to us.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]
This pay proposal for NHS staff has managed to be both wrong and unpopular. Over two thirds of those surveyed, including nearly 60% of Conservative voters, think that a 1% pay rise is less than our NHS staff deserve, and I believe that the Secretary of State should be in the Chamber answering this urgent question about it. Does the Minister agree that NHS staff are worth a real-terms pay increase? Does she consider that the billions wasted on ineffective or undelivered personal protective equipment could have been better spent on giving our NHS heroes a pay rise?
Helen Whately
It is absolutely right that we invested in ensuring that we could supply PPE to the NHS and the social care workforce during this extremely challenging time. There was a global shortage of PPE, so it is right that we spent money on that. As we look ahead at the pay deal for the next year, it is right that we exempt NHS staff from the wider pay freeze for the public sector and ensure that they get the recognition they deserve for what they have done and are still doing.
Social Care
Debate between Helen Whately and Barbara Keeley(4 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Helen Whately
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his suggestion. It is almost as if he has seen my notes.
One thing I particularly welcome is the number of hon. Members on both sides of the House who spoke about the importance of careworkers, who provide such important care.
My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) mentioned that both his parents were nurses in the care sector. He drew on his knowledge of care and rightly said that the profession should be held in higher esteem and that, just as we hugely value NHS staff, we should hugely value careworkers. The hon. Members for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols), for Blaydon (Liz Twist), for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for Putney (Fleur Anderson) and for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) spoke along the same lines, and I could not agree more.
Not long after I became the Member of Parliament for Faversham and Mid Kent, I joined a careworker, Kim, on her daily round. By the time I met her at 7.30 am, she had already started washing her first client. By lunch time, she had washed, dressed, fed, medicated and chatted with six or seven men and women. Some of them were grateful and some of them, quite honestly, were not grateful, but they were all utterly reliant on her care. That experience really brought home to me the skill, knowledge and compassion of our social care workers. For those who need help, there are amazing carers with hearts of gold, like Kim.
Our care system depends on an extraordinary workforce of capable and compassionate carers, but we need more people to choose care as a career. That means changing the perception of being a care worker. As a society, we must truly recognise the importance of the work. We must make sure that more people realise the range of jobs in care and the opportunities for progression. The Government are currently investing in an adult social care recruitment campaign with the strapline “When you care, every day makes a difference”. We are working with Skills for Care to support workforce development and there is funding for a workforce development fund. That is really important, but we know that we must go further in making sure that we truly value the important work that the care sector does and to make sure that the care profession attracts the workforce that we need and gives them the opportunities to lead a truly fulfilling career.
Several Members rightly talked about unpaid carers, who also provide so much vital care. We fully recognise the value of that work and know the importance of support for those people who do so much caring. That is one reason why the Government will introduce a statutory right to leave from work for one week a year for the 5 million people who juggle work alongside being an unpaid carer.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North talked about quality of care, and it was really important to hear that mentioned as part of the debate. He spoke about how good care is in his constituency, and he is absolutely right that we should talk about how good care is throughout England. Some 84% of adult social care providers are currently rated good or outstanding by the CQC. Let us recognise the high quality of care.
My hon. Friend also spoke about the importance of integration—of the NHS, local authorities and care providers working together—as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who is knowledgeable on this subject. The interplay between the NHS and social care is critical. The better care fund and the improved better care fund are a success story in respect of enabling more co-operation between the systems. It is crucial that we continue to build on that success so that our care system meets the needs of the individual, not just of the system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) made some excellent points about how, paradoxically, we can use technology to help to achieve more human and more personal care for a more cohesive and effective care system.
Both my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and the shadow Minister for Care, the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), mentioned those with learning disabilities and autism who are being cared for in in-patient settings. I am new to this job, but I absolutely appreciate the importance of making sure that we do better in this regard. People should be cared for in the best place for their needs. At the end of last month, the number of those in in-patient settings had been reduced by 24% compared with 2015—
Helen Whately
The shadow Minister is shaking her head; I know that there is more to do.
At times this has been a heated debate, but I heard on both sides truly constructive suggestions for how we can solve our social care challenges. That gives me much hope for cross-party consensus. I heard suggestions from my hon. Friends the Members for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) and for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), whom I thank for his kind words welcoming me to my job. He set the bar high for me to meet.
I am fully aware of the challenges that face our care system and I have no illusions as to the scale of the challenge facing us. In the next 10 years, we expect the number of people over 75 to go up by 1.5 million, and the number of people under 65 with care needs is growing, too. We have a system that is under pressure and the demands are only going to grow.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [Lords]
Debate between Helen Whately and Barbara KeeleyTuesday 2nd April 2019
(5 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Mental Capacity (Amendment) Act 2019 View all Mental Capacity (Amendment) Act 2019 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Messages as at 2 April 2019 - (2 Apr 2019)
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who makes such thoughtful contributions. I will be brief, as we appear to have a large amount of consensus on this piece of legislation.
First, I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for the work she has done on the Bill, her extremely consensual approach to it and the way she has listened to concerns from Members on both sides of the House and consulted stakeholders widely. It has been a real pleasure to work with her on the Bill, and I thank her for that.
This Bill is critical because it concerns some of the most vulnerable people in our society. We have talked about the fact that there are 125,000 people waiting to be processed for deprivation of liberty orders, and the system is not working, but there are 2 million people who have impaired mental capacity in the country, and we need to get the system right for all of them, not just the 125,000 who are being let down by the current system.
It is also important to say that the Bill builds on more than three years of work and the recommendations of the Law Commission. It has been fully scrutinised by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and the other place has contributed to it, as have members of the Bill Committee. I have received many emails in support of the fact that it introduces a better system, gets rid of the bureaucratic box-ticking exercises in the old system and should be better for both the individuals who are deprived of their liberty and their families.
Barbara Keeley
The work that was done for three years was on a 15-clause Bill that is not this Bill. We discussed that plenty of times in Committee. I think it only fair to be accurate. This five-clause Bill is not the Bill that was consulted on, and it is not the Bill that had three years of work. It is not correct to claim that it is. We spent a lot of time in Committee trying to put right the things that were missing and taken out of the earlier 15-clause Bill, and it is better to be accurate about that.
Helen Whately
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Broadly, I was attempting to say that a significant amount of work has gone into this. I have heard overwhelmingly from those working in the sector about the importance of doing something about the current situation, because it is not working and cannot be allowed to continue. This is urgent.
It is right that the NHS and social care providers will be given a bigger role in the decision-making process, so that people under their care receive better care and their rights are protected. The fact that we have people outside the system unprotected at the moment clearly cannot be right and cannot continue. During the passage of the Bill, I raised concerns about how it will work for people with fluctuating conditions, and I have been reassured by the Minister that responsible bodies will be required to keep individuals’ circumstances under review. I welcome the fact that there is further detailed guidance on fluctuating conditions in the code of practice.
I turn to the amendments and particularly the debate about the best way to define “deprivation of liberty”. It feels like a sensible conclusion has been reached in order for us to move forward, with a plan to develop the definition further through the code of practice. These things evolve and are extremely complex, and we need a flexible system that meets the needs of our society.
To sum up, the old system is not fit for purpose. The Bill makes important and timely amendments. It is better for individuals and all those around them to ensure that they have appropriate protections for the very serious matter of depriving individuals of liberty.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House does not insist on its amendment 1 to which the Lords has disagreed, and disagrees with Lords amendment 1B proposed in lieu, but proposes amendment (a) to the Bill in lieu of the Lords amendment.
Resolved,
That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 25A proposed to its amendment 25, but proposes amendments (a) and (b) to its amendment 25 in lieu of the Lords amendment.—(Jo Churchill.)
Social Care
Debate between Helen Whately and Barbara Keeley(6 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
I am sure that all of us who have been out and about with care workers in our constituencies have found the experience not only informative but inspiring. I certainly had a brilliant experience when I went out and about with a care worker in my patch. I saw the enormous compassion in the care that she provided and how incredibly hard she worked. It was a tough job, but a rewarding one. As many Members have said, however, the work is not well enough paid, there is no career structure and there is not enough support for carers in their day-to-day work.
Everyone in the Chamber today recognises that the current system is not fair and not working. It is not fair that people can get care for free if they can stay living in their home, but if they have to go into a care home, they might be left with only £14,000 of savings. Most people would much rather be cared for at home, but that is not always possible. The present system therefore discriminates against those who cannot stay at home to be cared for, and that is simply not fair. We need to bear that in mind as we talk about potential solutions. Let us not pretend for a moment that the current system is fair.
The system is also not working. Around 30% of the people in hospital in my constituency do not need to be there. They would be better off out of hospital, but there is often no outside support available for them. Delayed transfers of care are an ongoing challenge. There are also people in care homes because of the shortage of domiciliary care. We have to address what is substantially a funding challenge: there is simply not enough money going into care.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), said that she was going to give us Labour’s solutions to the problem. I listened carefully to her speech, but I was disappointed that she spent only about one minute of her 24-minute speech talking about potential solutions. I am afraid that I did not really hear any solutions—
Helen Whately
I am really sorry, but I cannot take any interventions. I have been asked not to.
Most significantly, the hon. Lady does not have a plan for how to pay for all this. It all comes down to how we are going to pay for improving access to care, and the Labour party simply does not have a plan. As for cross-party working, that would be fantastic but judging by some of the language I have heard from Labour Members, I do not think that many of them are ready to work together on this. I encourage the Government to get on with the job of proposing a better, sustainably funded, care system so that our constituents can get the care that they need.
NHS and Social Care Funding
Debate between Helen Whately and Barbara Keeley(7 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow hon. Members who have made very thoughtful contributions. The hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) spoke about loneliness, which is a problem across the country, and the very important work that is being done on that. It is also a pleasure to follow colleagues who have spoken about their personal and family experiences. My hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey), the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins), who is no longer in his place, and the hon. Member for Workington (Sue Hayman) spoke about their experiences, both good and bad, of the national health service.
I, too, have personal experiences both good and bad. Three years ago, I spent Christmas night in A&E with my son, who was five at the time, and who had his appendix taken out first thing in the morning on Boxing day. He had absolutely exemplary care and was home within two days, eagerly making up for the quantity of sausages that he had omitted to eat on Christmas day because of his tummy ache. Last Christmas, my grandmother, then aged 100, was in hospital—she was there for several months—and she had a much, much worse experience; it was not the NHS at its best. We all have good and bad experiences to draw on. We hear from our constituents, as well, about these good and bad experiences. It is important to recognise what the NHS does well, and is doing well, but also where the system is failing, and to focus on supporting the good and tackling the bad.
I very much understand why this debate has been called, because there is no question but that the NHS is under extraordinary pressure this winter. We have heard that last week it had the busiest week ever. However, I am quite disappointed by the tone of some of the contributions and more significantly by the lack of proposals from those who just said that that there is no money and made no suggestions as to where the money will come from. That is fundamentally unhelpful.
Barbara Keeley
It is very clear where the money is to come from—we are asking for £700 million to be brought forward from the better care fund from 2019. It is already allocated.
Helen Whately
I appreciate the hon. Lady’s point, but bringing money forward still requires it to be found. This is set against a backdrop of Labour, in 2015—less than two years ago—not committing to fund the NHS with the money that it was asking for, as this Conservative Government are now doing. Labour is in rather a shocking position.
I want to seize this opportunity to say a very heartfelt thank you to all members of NHS staff—nurses, doctors, allied health professionals, porters, care assistants—and those in social services, particularly those in and around my constituency in Kent, who I know are working extremely hard to deal with the pressure on the frontline. I also thank patients and their families who are being thoughtful and taking care to make the best use of the NHS.
We know that there is great variation in how the NHS is coping. I have just been told that the waiting time in Maidstone A&E is—as we speak—only 37 minutes, so Maidstone is coping pretty well right now, but at the nearby William Harvey hospital in Ashford it is over four hours, so there is variation. I do not say that so that people listening can divert from where they are going; there may be a case for that and for greater transparency, but that is for another day.
We talked earlier about money. There is no question but that this issue is partly about the need for more funding and more staff, but the Government are doing exactly that: they are giving the NHS more money and investing in significant increases in the workforce. However, money is not the whole answer. If the NHS just continued doing all it does in the way that it does without any change, we would find ourselves with a system that was unaffordable and that used a proportion of GDP for which there would not be public support. We know that we have an ageing population—people are living longer and have multiple complex conditions—and that high-cost treatments are becoming available that people want, so the NHS itself recognises that this is not just about more money but about changing the way in which services are delivered.
Such changes are being worked on and are actually happening at the moment. Earlier today, I spoke to the hospital trust chief executive who is the lead for the Kent and Medway sustainability and transformation plan. STPs have come up several times today. As I have seen, under him and the group around him, there has been a coming together across Kent and Medway of NHS organisations that have not tended to work closely together. The coming together of the NHS and social services is so important, so necessary and so right if we are to work out how to provide a better health service in a more sustainable way. We need to break down the barriers between organisations, as it just does not make sense to have a split between the NHS and social care in who provides what. We should look at how we can genuinely move care out of acute hospitals and closer to home, which we know is good for patients. It is exactly what the hon. Member for Workington hoped for her father and what we wanted for my grandmother as she neared the end of her life.
We need to enable people to be looked after closer to home or preferably at home, and to improve prevention and—I feel particularly strongly about this—mental health care. The Prime Minister has taken a personal lead on mental healthcare with her announcements on Monday. In the light of the pressure on A&E, I particularly value the commitment to psychiatric liaison in A&E departments, which we know is helpful in the prevention of suicide, is good for people who go to A&E with mental health problems and helps A&Es look after the people who need to be seen for physical health problems. I welcome the fact that my area of Kent is looking at bringing that forward and having psychiatric liaison in all A&Es by 2018. Really important work is therefore going on at local level.
I encourage Labour Members not to make the knee-jerk or even tear-jerk speeches that some have made, but to take a longer view of the situation. That would help us to have a more mature conversation about what the NHS needs and to talk about policies and concrete proposals, rather than just about having more money, to solve the problems. It would also enable us to get behind what the NHS is doing at local level, where the NHS and local authorities are coming together to draw up plans across their areas for better care for patients in an affordable and sustainable way.
Social Care
Debate between Helen Whately and Barbara Keeley(7 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Barbara Keeley
It is, and I agree with my hon. Friend that care costs are just running away with themselves, making the situation much harder for people.
The bulk of the extra funding that the Government promised to social care from the better care fund comes in 2018-19 and 2019-20. We have had six years of cuts to local authority budgets, and the extra funding promised for social care is backloaded to those later years in this Parliament.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
The hon. Lady mentioned the most common causes of delayed transfers of care. However, I know that in hospitals in Kent near my constituency, around 30% of the delayed transfers of care are attributable to delays in social care and the majority are for other reasons. Does she not agree that it is important for the NHS to take its own steps within its own organisations to improve people’s discharge from hospital?
Barbara Keeley
That is what we are debating. Of course the NHS should put its own house in order, too, but delays should not happen on account of social care. People should not be stuck for weeks or months in hospital, waiting for a care home placement or a nursing home placement. I shall go on to say why.
Returning to the issue of the backloading of funding, in view of what was happening to social care, the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services appealed before the last autumn statement for £700 million of the promised better care funding to be moved forward to this year and next year. That appeal was ignored. Reacting to that, Ray James of ADASS said:
“Ministers must know that their proposals do not deliver sufficient funding to meet the growing number of older and disabled people requiring increasingly complex care and support…The Council Tax precept will raise least money in areas of greatest need which risks heightening inequality. Councils in deprived areas will have greatest social care needs, yet they will raise less than a third of what more affluent areas do through this approach.”
He went on by clarifying that ADASS does
“not believe that the funding for the next couple of years will anywhere near meet the costs of the national living wage and the increasing demand for social care.”