Social Care

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley]

I will talk about how the Labour party will take forward proposals on the future of social care. We wait to hear what the Government choose to do. My hon. Friend is right that there is a driving need now.

The number of people—1.2 million—living with unmet care needs will inevitably rise without an injection of new funding. A lack of publicly funded care means that the task of meeting care needs falls more heavily on unpaid family carers. Many carers have to give up work because of the demands of caring, which has a real impact on their finances and future career prospects. The case for listening to carers and giving them more support is overwhelming. We were expecting a new carers’ strategy this spring, or, at the latest, in the summer. Some 6,500 carers had taken the time over and above their caring responsibilities to respond to the Government’s consultation. However, the Care Minister told me that the responses will merely be taken forward into a new consultation on social care.

Katy Styles, a carer and a campaigner for the Motor Neurone Disease Association, contributed to that consultation and hoped that her voice would be heard, alongside 6,500 other carers. She told me:

“Not publishing the National Carers Strategy has made me extremely angry. It sends a message that carers’ lives are unimportant. It sends a message that Government thinks we can carry on as we are. It sends a message that my own time is of little worth.”

That is a shabby way to treat carers—the people who provide more than 50% of the care in this country.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The hon. Lady refers to unpaid carers. Labour’s motion references the Communities and Local Government Committee report on adult social care, which looked at the German system of social insurance. Under that system, payments are made to family members to remunerate them for that care. Has she read that report, and is it something that she is willing to look at in further detail on a cross-party basis?

[Barbara Keeley]

I will come on later to discuss how we should proceed and whether we should proceed on a cross-party basis. The hon. Gentleman’s point about carers and family carers is important. The plain fact of the matter is that there was nothing for carers in his party’s manifesto. We had announced that we were going to lift carer’s allowance at least to the level of jobseeker’s allowance. That is the only improvement that was discussed during the general election. He should turn to his own Minister and his own party and ask them what they will do for carers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I am not very impressed by the tale that the hon. Lady describes, but I would like to look into it more directly and get back to her.

The Government have already invested an additional £2 billion to put social care on a more stable footing and alleviate short-term pressures across the health and care system. However, further long-term reform is required to ensure that we have a sustainable system for the future—one equipped to meet the challenges of the increasing numbers of people with care needs. To address these questions, the Government will work with partners—including those who use services, those who work to provide care, and all other agencies—to bring forward proposals for public consultation. The consultation will cover a wide range of options to encourage a very wide debate. It will set out options to improve the social care system and put it on a more secure financial footing, supporting people, families and communities to prepare for old age, and it will address issues related to the quality of care and variation in practice. It will include proposals on options for caps on overall care costs and means-tested floors. It is, however, a consultation, and the Government wish to approach the future of social care in the spirit of consensus. Our consultation is designed to encourage a grown-up conversation in order that society can rise to this challenge.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The Minister refers to a number of options that the Government will consider. Will they also consider the suggestion contained in that Select Committee report of a system of social insurance, which would be sustainable and simple and would deal with some of the points raised about adults of working age with learning disabilities? The scheme would cover all those things and provide protection for people who are on low incomes. It seems to work very effectively in Germany, where it garnered cross-party support when it was introduced.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I agree that we want to learn from examples in other countries. As I have said, the spirit of the consultation will be to allow a well-informed debate, as a result of which consensus can be established. In view of that, we will consider a wide variety of options, covering not just funding but lifestyle solutions and other issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), who made a good point about the sustainability of providers, an issue to which I shall return shortly.

I was pleased to see the Communities and Local Government Committee report on adult social care listed as a document relevant to the motion. I serve on the Committee and contributed to that report. We established what I think we are all aware of: there is a demographic time bomb with respect to social care. The King’s Fund said that there are hundreds of thousands of people in their 80s and 90s and that the number grew by third in the past 10 years and will double in the next 20 years.

The problem is not going to go away and there is no doubt that, as a result, the system is under pressure. This is about not only the overall numbers of people affected but the individual devastation. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), referred to “catastrophic care costs”, which is a fair way to put it. It cannot be right that one person and their family can be affected in such a catastrophic way if they have long-term care needs such as dementia. We need to consider the impact on their family and the financial consequences of those catastrophic costs.

It is not right for either the Government or the individual to have a blank cheque on this issue, so we need to look for a different solution. When most of us see a potentially catastrophic risk, we insure ourselves against it. As part of its adult social care inquiry, the Select Committee visited Berlin to look at the German system. Adult social care in Germany was previously funded by local government, but a social insurance system was introduced in 1994. Every person has to pay into the system, although there is a threshold so that low earners are taken care of and do not have to pay. Everyone else pays around 1.2% of their salary, with their employer also contributing. It is a bit like auto-enrolment, but for social care.

The system in Germany has been successful. It was introduced with cross-party agreement, which is what has been called for today by Government and Opposition Members alike and which I absolutely support. In Germany, if care is needed, the money paid out of insurance policies can be paid to family members, so the social fabric element of social care is catered for, because more families look after their relatives when they are in need—they are not unpaid carers; they are actually paid. The German system helps the provision of the right kind of support from the right people, and I really hope that the Government will consider it as a permanent, sustainable, scalable and simple solution to this problem.