Care Homes (Regulation)

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you for calling me, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) on bringing this topic to Westminster Hall, setting the scene and explaining its importance from his personal experience and knowledge.

Care homes should and must provide care and services to some of the most vulnerable in society. I believe and the House believes that those who have worked hard and have contributed to society and the economy all their lives deserve appropriate care and dignity in their old age. We have the opportunity to be a voice for those who cannot be a voice for themselves. That is the issue the hon. Gentleman has brought to the House today. The people involved are often at the fringes of society and are of all ages. Many people in care homes do not have immediate family and that is another concern. We read stories in the press and we may be suspicious of them, but they illustrate the problem. There is no smoke without fire, so if there is a story in the press there must be at least some truth in the story.

Some people may be physically unable to look after themselves, including those who are elderly or have learning difficulties, dementia or Alzheimer’s. They deserve the very best care in care homes and their families need the assurance that they are well looked after. If someone has dementia, Alzheimer’s or a physical disability, they deserve the same treatment and care as others to ensure that their meals are correct and that they are given a wee bit of time, compassion and understanding, as the hon. Gentleman said. It is imperative to do all we can to protect those in care homes and to ensure that they receive the care and dignity they deserve.

I welcome the opportunity to question how the Government intend to improve regulation of the industry so that the people who are cared for are protected. I am always a bit suspicious of statistics—as the saying goes, there are lies, damned lies and statistics—but they are clear. Only 64% of care service providers in England are registered with the Care Quality Commission, so there is a question to be answered. I have great respect for the Minister’s understanding and I think the world of him, so I am sure that in his response we will hear the compassionate understanding that he feels personally and as a Minister. I look forward to that.

The Care Quality Commission monitors and regulates care organisations to ensure that they are continuing to meet national standards, and herein we encounter the first issue about regulating care homes. We need to press for much higher levels of registration if we are even to think about improving regulation. We cannot improve regulation if we do not have registration. I hope that we can make higher levels of registration a key part not just of this debate, but of the Government response. We cannot improve regulation if 36% of care service providers are not registered with the main body for monitoring and regulating the industry. Indeed, we should express immediate concern about whether those unregistered care providers are up to the national standard. I am not saying that they are not, but Government observation and monitoring is needed to ensure that they are.

Last year, following years of scandals, the Care Quality Commission announced that it would reinspect all care services and then rate them individually. We do not want to go into too much detail about the most horrible stories and incidents, but they do resonate with all of us as elected representatives. Care homes judged to be inadequate would be shut down and their directors banned from working in such positions again.

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very important speech. He references the examples of abuse, mainly involving physical abuse, that we have heard about. Does he share my concern that in other care homes the problem is not physical abuse, but people not receiving proper nutrition? It is a national scandal that £13 billion of NHS money is spent every year dealing with poor nutrition, much of it in the elderly population. There are no doubt some very good nursing homes and care homes, but the quality of the food in homes often contributes to the decline of residents, and the CQC needs to get a handle on that as well.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; he is right. I tried to make the point earlier about the food that residents eat and its nutritional value, and about the time that may need to be spent looking after someone and feeding them. I thank the hon. Gentleman for highlighting another very important issue.

The National Audit Office found that just 9% of services had been assessed as of July this year, despite the deadline for inspections being February next year—a deadline that has been pushed back. Obviously, the February deadline cannot now be met, because 91% of homes cannot be inspected in that time, but perhaps when the Minister responds we can get an idea of a new deadline in relation to the inspection regime.

However well intended the Care Quality Commission system is, there are clear failings in the current way of doing things, and today’s debate gives us the opportunity to discuss the way ahead in terms of improving the poor rate of inspection. The right hon. and hon. Members who are here will illustrate that very clearly. Concerns have been raised across the political spectrum, both in newspapers and by political representatives, and I hope that the solution to those concerns can also be found on a cross-party, bipartisan basis. After all, this matter concerns us all. It is not a matter of scoring points—it is never that with me anyway, but it certainly is not with anyone in this debate, because we all have the same focus and commitment to delivery of the same level of care and to ensuring that all homes reach a certain level.

We have had many issues in the past in Northern Ireland. I know that this is a devolved matter and the responsibility of someone else, but having the appropriate protection and regulation is so important to ensuring that abuses are not happening. The historical and the up-to-date abuse cases that we see in the papers need to become a thing of the past.

We can come together from both sides of the House, set the right course, address the issues and hopefully, through the Minister and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), provide some direction in relation to the solutions. I hope that my contribution and the issues I raised have been noted by the Minister—indeed, I know that they have been—and that they will prove useful to eliciting a strategy and a response from Government to ensure that this matter is addressed correctly as a matter of urgency, as the hon. Member for North Devon said, and to the best of our ability.

[Several hon. Members rose—]