Social Care Funding

Debate between Layla Moran and Baroness Keeley

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley]

I very much agree. In recent months, I have met carers of people with MND and one becomes aware of how much time presses on them.

Our motion deals with social care funding, but this debate is really about people, such as the people my hon. Friend just referred to. It is about how society treats older and younger adults, how we should enable them to live independently and with dignity, and how this Government are badly letting them down. I will look today at the damage caused by Government inaction—damage to vulnerable people who rely on social care to live with dignity, damage to the lives of unpaid family carers who have had to step in to care for their friends and relatives, and damage to 1.4 million hard-working care staff, many of whom are so badly paid and so overworked that they cannot deliver the care that people need.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I am not sure whether the hon. Lady knows that in Oxford this is now starting to affect the local NHS. The John Radcliffe Hospital had to suspend non-urgent operations on two separate occasions in March because 170 beds were being bed-blocked. Does she not agree that it is time to see the promised Green Paper on social care, before this winter?

[Barbara Keeley]

Indeed. As I said, it is now coming up to a year since that was promised and it is about time that we started to see some plans. However, we have to bear in mind that a Green Paper is only the first stage of change—and a very early stage at that, really.

I want to pay tribute to the care staff I just mentioned. There has been a lot of talk recently about low-paid staff and how they will fare in terms of migration policies. Being low-paid does not mean that caring roles are low-skilled. Caring staff are highly skilled. They are a credit to this country, and without their dedication the problems facing social care would be immeasurably worse. Unfortunately, their efforts cannot paper over the cracks that have emerged because of this Government’s hammer blows to council budgets. I will come on to talk about the impacts that social care cuts have on people.