Supporting Carers

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, not least because it is an important chance for us to pay tribute to the tremendous contribution made by carers across the country. I pay tribute particularly to the carers in my constituency.

As the Minister rightly said, many people do not even identify themselves as playing a caring role, yet they make a substantial contribution to supporting family members. That, of course, saves the public purse an enormous amount of money, but it frequently puts such individuals and their families under great pressure and stress.

I want to highlight the importance of providing carers with the financial support needed to participate fully in a life beyond care. That is at the heart of all the other forms of engagement and support rightly identified by the Minister, such as service support and measures enabling carers to get out into the community and, if they want to and can, to take up paid work.

I am concerned that carers are facing a raw deal financially. Many carers are placed in a position of relative poverty as a result of their caring role. I am concerned that recent announcements and the effect of the spending cuts that are still expected could put them in a yet more difficult position.

I am particularly anxious that, in the medium term, linking the value of safety net benefits to the consumer prices index will depress the value of carers’ income. I think that we would all agree that carer’s allowance is far from generous. Many other benefits important to families that include carers will be hit by the same constraint. The financial resources available to carers are a concern. Clearly, adequate financial resources are a prerequisite of every form of social participation: for example, the ability to take time out to go to the cinema, to go swimming or even just to have the pleasure of a cup of coffee in the town centre down the road.

The second issue about which carers have expressed concerns to me, not because it directly affects them individually but because of its effect on the people for whom they care, is the Government’s intention to test eligibility for disability living allowance. Carers recognise that their entitlement to carer’s allowance is affected in many cases by the assessment made of the individual for whom they care and whether that person is entitled to DLA.

I alert the Minister to the difficulties already arising in the processes for testing people for the new employment and support allowance. If testing is to be widened significantly, it is important that those problems are not replicated and that people’s eligibility for benefits to which they are entitled can be confirmed quickly. It is extremely retrograde to run people through medical tests for a disability living allowance intended not specifically to meet medical needs but to support much wider social participation needs. This is about meeting the extra costs that come with disability and long-term ill health. Medical assessments do not get to the nub of those problems.

Another of the Government’s financial announcements affecting carers that is causing concern is the decision not to continue with the savings gateway. Caring eats into savings, leaving families with little to fall back on. The savings gateway has been a success story, enabling people to set aside modest amounts in the knowledge that their saving plan would be supplemented and supported by Government investment. Many carers are disappointed that it will not continue.

I am sure that my hon. Friends and other hon. Members will also want to speak about the impact on the wider service network available to carers and concerns about the implementation of public service cuts. The cuts must be made in a way that protects carers and ensures that their needs continue to be met. I highlight particularly the concerns in my constituency about the tremendous time lag in assessing family members’ needs that frequently leaves carers without any support at all. Often, in due course, that support is put in place, but it is quite unacceptable that assessments should take weeks, months or, in some cases, even years. In the meantime, carers are put under great pressure to manage as best they can.

Other hon. Members will also want to draw attention to the opportunities for carers to participate more fully in paid work. I was pleased that the Minister referred to the need to ensure that people are aware of their right to request flexible working and acknowledged that we have a significant job to do with regard to employers. I certainly accept his challenge to ensure that the employers in my constituency are well aware of the issue. There is a particular imperative on the public sector to lead the way and to show that it can be the sort of employer that exemplifies the highest of standards in this field.

Of course, the real problem for carers entering paid work is the massive financial disincentive that they face as soon as they earn only a modest amount of money and the cliff-edge threshold that comes in as soon as they are on earnings of more than £97 a week. I think that we can all agree that that is a modest sum—for a large number of carers, work simply does not pay. We cannot afford the carer’s allowance to become the new equivalent of the much criticised dumping ground that, in effect, incapacity benefit became, when it was used as a way of massaging people out of the workplace on to some other form of inadequate benefit. It is important that carers can make work pay through a more generous disregard of earnings and a more gradual withdrawal rate as they move into paid work.

Everyone understands the financial pressures on public expenditure, but it is absolutely wrong that carers, who contribute so much and who are among the poorest, should take the biggest hit. They are being hit by the triple whammy of poor benefits, a difficulty in making work pay and a worry about the future investment in the services on which they rely. Those factors cumulatively add up to a severe limitation on the ability of carers to participate in the activities outside caring that so many of them desire to undertake. I very much hope that the public spending round of the comprehensive spending review will provide more generosity towards that vital group of people than the Budget has given us cause to hope for so far.