Policing
Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Andy Burnham(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend puts her case very well. Crime may indeed be changing, and moving away from volume crime, such as car crime and burglary, but that is not to say that crime is falling. As I have said before, online crime is not adequately reflected in the crime figures. She rightly says that there are worrying increases in the most serious crimes in a number of areas, including in our part of the world, in Greater Manchester.
Andy Burnham
I will make a little progress if I may, and take some further interventions later.
I was just saying that I do not see the evidence to shrink our police force back to the levels of the 1970s, leaving us with fewer police officers per head of population than other comparable countries. That brings me to my second question, which is not for the Home Secretary, but for the whole House. If there is no authoritative evidence that cuts on this scale will not put our constituents at risk, how on earth can we allow them through? We have called this debate today for the following reasons: to challenge the Government on what we feel is a reckless gamble with public safety; to give voice to the deep disquiet felt by thousands of police officers across all 43 forces in England and Wales about the future of policing and community safety; to initiate a proper debate about the future of policing and the needs of our communities, in advance of the spending review; and to alert the public to the enormity of what is at stake by launching a national campaign today to protect our police. Just as with tax credits, I cannot remember the public being told about these plans to decimate neighbourhood policing before they went to vote.
Adult Social Care
Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Andy Burnham(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Andy Burnham
Yes, I will. There is no difference between us on that, but there is a difference between us on the funding position that the Minister has set out. The King’s Fund and others have identified that there is a £1 billion funding gap in adult social care in England, not just because of the money but because of the demographic pressures, which we cannot get away from.
The Government’s commitment was to give more money to the health service, but we have produced figures showing a real-terms cut in outturn last year, and we also notice that transfers—indeed, recent transfers—have had to be made to the social care system, which implies that the Government have left it short, and that there is an emergency propping-up of the system, revealing the flaw in their position.
Kelvin Hopkins
To reinforce the point that my right hon. Friend makes, on a recent visit to my local hospital I was told by staff that they have more than 20 elderly patients who are perfectly well enough to live in a care home, but the care homes will not accept them and the funding cannot be found for them. Care is free in hospital, but it costs outside, so those people are forced to stay in hospital, and that places extra costs on the NHS.
Andy Burnham
The two systems do not work in such situations. The health service is intrinsically tied up with the social care system, and if it collapses the health service cannot discharge people from hospital. It is a false economy.
As for what is happening on the ground, the Minister commented on funding nationally, but in reality eight out of 10 councils now provide care only for those with substantial or critical needs: they are restricting their eligibility criteria. Age UK estimates that that leaves 800,000 people without any formal support, representing plenty of unmet need, and the situation also leads councils to increase charges for home care. The average cost for a disabled or older person paying for 10 hours a week of home care is now £7,015 a year. Never mind a death tax, that is a stealth tax—or a dementia tax, as people pay more and more for the costs of care while they are alive. It is not fair, it is not right, and we should do something about it.
That is why we say to the Government that we must address the question of the local government baseline alongside that of Dilnot. There cannot be a choice; we have to do both. If we do not and we fund only Dilnot, a larger number of people will pay increased charges but with a cap on what the charges might be, and that will not feel like the leap forward or the social progress that the Care and Support Alliance and others are looking for. It will not help us to drive up quality in the care system, either, but we desperately need to do so.
Councils are being forced to stretch inadequate budgets ever more thinly, and that is leading to corners being cut. I shall illustrate that directly with an example from my constituency. Several years ago, Wigan council contracted out home care services in our borough, and staff were transferred to a number of private providers, which have changed hands over the years. Just after Christmas, home care workers in Leigh came to my surgery and told me how things had broken down over the Christmas period, leaving vulnerable people, frankly, unsupported. They showed me the timesheets that they had been given by the company they were working for, and one of them included four simultaneous bookings for 12 o’clock—a point that I think my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South made—on different sides of town, with no travel time built in. Impossible. If we look at the whole day, we find appointments within 10 or 15 minutes of each other, which are meant to include travel time as well as time for looking after older people. That is fundamentally unacceptable.
I was told about staff working extra hours because of that situation, and then not being paid. They said that equipment such as aprons and gloves was not being provided, and that staff were funding them out of their own pockets, which again is absolutely wrong. They also raised concerns about rotas being issued only the night before, and care assistants not having keys to get in to meet the service-users they were visiting. Across the board, there were terrible problems and vulnerable people were being left without support.
Members might think that the company in question is a small, local one, but in fact it is Alpha Homecare Ltd, which is wholly owned by Carewatch Care Services Ltd, a national company with 154 offices nationwide. That is an example from Leigh, but I bet that other Members could cite similar ones.
Kelvin Hopkins
I agree with the hon. Gentleman entirely. The Care Quality Commission was encouraged to have light-touch regulation and to do only occasional inspections, of which the homes were usually warned. The inspections were not adequate, and many homes fell below the standards anybody would expect. If every care home was rigorously inspected, with spot checks from time to time, we might ensure that they lived up to the standards that we expect. However, it could cost a bit more because they might have to employ more qualified staff and so on.
We should professionalise the system and ensure that it is properly regulated and checked, even if it stays in the private sector. I personally prefer public provision, with people who are motivated by what I call the public service ethos. I have seen that working and I have seen what has replaced it. People come to my surgery and complain about being forced to move out of care homes that are being closed. That is especially difficult for those with dementia. People are pressed to go into other homes, which the residents’ families often find inferior. Some are good, but not all, and people are unhappy that three care homes in my constituency have closed.
The first home closed 10 to 12 years ago and I remonstrated with the local authority officer concerned. After an hour, he finally said that it was about costs: that private care homes pay lower wages, and that the staff work longer hours and have shorter holidays. I said that at least that was honest, but it was not right.
I disagree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) about young people paying. Most taxation involves redistribution to ourselves at other stages of our lives. When we pay national insurance contributions for pensions, we are in a sense saving for ourselves later through a state system. With the health service, we pay in when we can and take out when we need. It is a redistribution to ourselves. The young paying in now for long-term care is a sensible approach, especially as it will be proportionate.
Andy Burnham
The young would not be paying for their own care; we would be asking them to pay for the care of people who are already at an age when they might need the care system. In a world where those old people have built up valuable housing assets but young people cannot get on the housing ladder, is it right for us to say, “Here’s another tax for you to pay—for care for older people”?
Kelvin Hopkins
We must start getting the system right somewhere. We can adjust taxation provision in other ways in the short term, but in the long term we must have a properly progressive taxation system to pay for adult social care. I have just been to Denmark. Many Government Members and others say that high-tax countries are weak economies, but the tax take in Denmark as a proportion of gross domestic product is 18% higher than in Britain. The Danish have free tuition at universities, and students are paid €5,000 a year to go there up to the age of 25. I am not saying that we should do that, but I am making the point that taxation at that level, provided it is fair and progressive, does not ruin economies.
It is matter of choice. I have told the story of my young children many times in the Chamber. When my son asked for a second ice cream, my wife would say, “Mummy can’t afford it.” She was saying not that we could not afford it—we could—but, “You’re not having another ice-cream.” When people talk about affordability, they are saying, “We choose not to pay.” Those who constantly campaign for a low-tax society are doing down people who are in need. We must accept that if we want to be looked after when we are in need, we must pay taxes.
When people on the doorstep ask me what my problem is, I say, “I don’t pay enough tax.” I am sure other hon. Members do not say that. My income is now more than sufficient for me to live a very comfortable life, but the income of many young people is not sufficient for them. There is nothing wrong with shifting the burden of taxation to those who are on higher incomes or those for whom most expenses are over. It is unfashionable to say such things, but I happen to believe they are right.
I mentioned the care homes in my constituency, but another issue is that of payment. Our tax gap was not so long ago estimated at £120 billion a year. If we collected just 5% of that, we could pay for free long-term care without a problem. To be fair to the Government, they are starting to wake up to the need to close that tax gap—not enough, but a bit. We have left it alone for too long, because they do not want to upset rich people who are investing in the Cayman Islands or wherever.
The Government are starting to put a little pressure on and are employing a few more tax collectors. I know from my local VAT office that every inspector collects many times their own salary, so why not employ many more to get the VAT in? People recently went to prison for a tax fraud whereby they used VAT for import and export. Such people make billions out of hon. Members and our constituents. Let us round up a few of them and stop that loophole, and ensure that people who are well off and who should pay taxes do so.
I have known Andrew Dilnot for many years—he is a civilised, highly intelligent and wholly admirable man. He did a good job in his report of trying to find the fulcrum point—the Treasury might just wear what he is proposing, but if he went further it would probably say no. There is a parallel with Adair Turner, another intelligent, civilised man. He tried to change the pension system a bit. He knew that if he pushed the Treasury too far, it would react and he would not get what he wanted. Indeed, he had a hard job persuading the previous Chancellor to accept his proposals.
The authors of those reports try to come up with recommendations that will be acceptable to the Government and the Treasury instead of coming up with what they believe to be a strong position. The problem is not the electorate, but the Government and hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. Ministers and officials will not accept the approach I suggest for a more civilised society.
Like all hon. Members, I do a lot of public speaking. I say, “What would you choose? Would you take the risk that your family member’s house will be compulsorily sold, and all the money used to look after granny, or will you pay a tiny bit more tax over a lifetime to make sure that granny is properly looked after without being forced to sell the house?” For wealthy people, that does not matter, but it does matter for many working class people, including first-time owner-occupiers. In many cases, they have bought council houses, which I do not believe is a good idea. They have a bit of equity in their family for the first time ever and it can be used to help their children—or grandchildren usually—to stay in the owner-occupied sector, but it is being eaten away by their being forced to pay for care for elderly relatives. Indeed, owner-occupation is now falling as a proportion of housing tenure. Whatever one thinks about owner-occupation or renting, that is happening, and a factor in that might be that people are being forced to sell houses to pay for care, and the equity is in effect being lost in rich taxpayers’ pockets, because they are the ones who can get away with not paying enough to ensure that granny is looked after.
We have to accept that people are living longer. We have not found a solution yet to Alzheimer’s or dementia. I hope that we do—it will solve many problems—but while we have not, we have to ensure that elderly people are cared for, which means that we have to pay for it properly. We will all get old one day, and we all might need this care one day. Certainly, for me and my family, I want to ensure that, as and when any of us need that care, it will be there for us and provided properly in a civilised and caring way.