Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Whately and Desmond Swayne(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)
Social care depends on the skills and compassion of our care workforce. That is why we are investing £250 million in reforming care as a career, with a new care qualification, specialist training courses for experienced care workers and a new career structure to support progression, alongside increased funding for social care, our national recruitment campaign and the care worker visa.
Sir Desmond Swayne
We need many, many more domiciliary care workers. How will we get them?
Helen Whately
My right hon. Friend is right. We have some good news: Skills for Care data shows that home care job vacancies are falling—something I hear when I speak to home care providers. Looking ahead to next winter, I want every local authority to have enough home care on hand. That is why I emphasised the importance of home care when we distributed £600 million of discharge funding to local councils and NHS organisations in April. We are asking all local authorities to plan ahead and book enough home care in advance for this coming winter.
National Health Service
Debate between Helen Whately and Desmond Swayne(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Helen Whately
During the course of this speech, I will share as much information as I can with my right hon. Friend on the rationale behind this, but let me address his point about the timing. He says that it could be done later, but the problem is that, if we do it later, will we suggesting that it is too late for care home staff who have not yet been vaccinated? The point is to give care home staff the time between this being legislated upon and its being implemented in time for the winter, when we know that there is a greater risk of a combination of covid and flu, to get vaccinated, in the knowledge that we are generally seeing an eight-week period between doses.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The Minister will appreciate that the provisions before us extend well beyond the care home staff. With respect to the 1% of those staff of whom she spoke, in the absence of the impact assessment, if their failure to be vaccinated results in dismissal, who will be responsible for the compensation?
Helen Whately
My right hon. Friend asks an important question about how things would work in practice, although I think he is presuming that there is a question of compensation. I expect to see care homes being able to follow a process, and so long as they follow a fair process, there should be no need for the compensation that my right hon. Friend suggests. We will set out guidance, but the point is that there is a fair process in which, for instance, a care home can discuss vaccination with its staff member and, indeed, look at whether there might be an alternative role for an individual if they really do not want to be vaccinated, although I am realistic that there are not that many roles for staff in care homes that do not involve being in the care home. After that, if the situation is still that the staff member does not wish to be vaccinated, the care home must follow a notice period and make sure that it follows a fair process.
Public Health
Debate between Helen Whately and Desmond Swayne(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Do the police have powers of entry into a private dwelling to enforce these rules?
Helen Whately
I would not want to say anything incorrect at the Dispatch Box, so let me make sure that I get back to my right hon. Friend with a detailed answer to that question.
After a period of reducing or stabilising the transmission of the virus, we have been seeing daily case numbers rise rapidly across most parts of the country. That is why the Government chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser jointly agreed the changes that we announced. We know from the science of what has sadly happened in other countries that are experiencing a second wave that an increase in infections will lead to increases in hospitalisations and deaths until we take action.
In introducing the changes, we noted that clear and easily understood information about the virus and how it spreads was likely to increase adherence to public health advice. Although the majority of people report that they understand social distancing rules, feedback from the public and Members of this House indicate that people would value simpler messaging. That is why we have moved to the rule of six—one number for all settings—and have tightened the regulations so that they exactly reflect the guidance rather than there being one set of numbers in the guidance and another set of numbers in the legal framework. The rules were simplified and strengthened, so that they were easier to understand and so that the police could identify and disperse illegal gatherings.
We have acted to get the virus under control and, in doing that, we want in due course to be able to make changes and, clearly, to be able to lift the restrictions. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) asked specifically about children. The position on this is, as I have said, the need for a clear steer. We needed the guidance to be simple and absolutely clear to everybody. We wanted, on the one hand, to enable a level of socialising for the sake of people’s quality of life, while on the other hand to take steps to control the virus. That is why we took the position that the rule of six achieved that balance. I appreciate that colleagues would like a different position to have been taken, but that is the position based on the—