Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Whately and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend is right to say that drainage boards do really important work. The fact is that the public sector, as well as the private sector, needs to decarbonise. In fact, in a low-lying constituency where there is a great awareness of flooding and climate change it is probably even more important, and I am sure his constituents appreciate the importance of reducing our carbon dioxide emissions. I know that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is working with the Association of Drainage Authorities on the point that he makes.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

6. What recent assessment he has made of the availability of (a) mortgages and (b) credit for self-employed people who utilised the Government’s covid-19 support schemes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Whately and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

I am well aware of concerns about the surcharge. Many overseas nurses coming to work in the NHS do not have to pay the surcharge, as it is covered by their employer.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The phrase “brightest and best”, when it appears in immigration talk, is obviously subjective and deliberately vague. What the private sector and local authorities want to know is: under the new Government system, will they be able to get people to come in who want to provide care—people we are desperate for?

[Helen Whately]

For the NHS, we have the NHS visa and a clear route to come to work in the health sector. For social care, there is a job to be done by employers, to make sure that working in social care is an attractive job that is well paid. I also recognise that there is a role for Government and for all of us in Parliament, to come together and support changes to how we fund social care. We need to fix the social care system for the future.

Social Care

Debate between Helen Whately and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

I have already visited two care homes since becoming Minister for Care, and I want to visit many more. I hope I will be able to take up my hon. Friend’s invitation and see that good work for myself.

I pay tribute to my predecessor as Minister for Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage). I hear that she was visiting a hospice on reshuffle day—her actions illustrate the enormous commitment and compassion she brought to this role. I sincerely hope to follow in her footsteps.

I also thank all the hon. Members who have spoken today. Social care is important to many thousands of our constituents, and their interest and input are incredibly valuable.

[Mr Perkins]

I welcome the Minister to her post, and I welcome what she says about carers. Would it not be wonderful if, rather than just giving them her warm words, support and admiration, she were able to join a cross-party campaign to see that carers get paid more than burger flippers in McDonald’s so that we actually start recognising them with the same prestige as nurses and the same earnings as people in our health service?

[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—