National Carers Week

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Thursday 8th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to speak in the debate and congratulate the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) on securing it. I always feel privileged to speak on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition, but this issue is close to my heart. Across the country, millions of us are doing what any daughter or son, husband, wife or partner, mum or dad would do when someone they love is sick, frail, elderly or disabled: look after them the very best we can.

It can be hugely rewarding to care for the person who means so much to you and who has helped you so many times. But it can also be a terrible struggle: trying to hold down your job, or travelling up and down the country, while battling to get your mum or dad out of hospital; spending hours arranging seemingly endless NHS and care appointments on the phone, wondering why on earth no one else seems to be talking to each other; searching for the right home care, or a care home that you can actually trust; and figuring out what help, if any, you or the person you are caring for are entitled to, financial or otherwise. The pressure, stress and, often, guilt, can wreak havoc with your own physical and mental health. The financial costs can be ruinous, too, especially if you just cannot make it all work and have to quit your job. Most of the time, you just feel ignored or invisible—not just to all the different services that you are battling with, but in your workplace and in wider society.

Hon. Members have spoken powerfully about their and their constituents’ experiences, about what needs to change to improve the lives and life chances of Britain’s amazing army of unpaid carers, and about the need to better recognise and improve support for the physical and mental health of family carers who are battling to see a GP, or anyone else. They are not even getting the statutory assessment to which they are entitled under the Care Act 2014, not least because of the cuts to local government services. There is a real need for breaks—not just physical breaks from caring, but something for carers to look forward to and to help them keep going. Many carers face poverty: a quarter have to cut back on the essentials of life and people sell everything they have just to try to keep the show on the road.

The real implications of providing care when young include the sacrifices you make of your hopes and dreams, and the shame that you feel, which often never leaves you. On finding out who is a carer in the first place, let us be honest: most people do not think that they are a carer—they are just trying to be a good son or daughter, husband or wife—but without that recognition, they will never get any help.

Those issues are not new, but they are growing. After 13 years of failure on social care reform, on top of covid and the cost of living crisis, the pressures on families are becoming unbearable. However, the argument that I will make is not the moral case for transforming support for unpaid family carers, although that is a case in which I firmly believe; it is the economic case, particularly the need for us to start to see a decent social care system as part of our country’s economic infrastructure, not just as a vital public service.

We live in the century of ageing and, as we all live for longer, more and more of us are going to have to work and care for longer. Almost 5 million people are already juggling work with caring for an older, sick or disabled relative. That is one in seven of all workers and it is only going to increase. The burden often falls on women, especially those in their 50s and 60s. The latest census shows that one in five of all women aged 55 to 60 are caring for an older or disabled loved one. That is a staggering figure that has received far too little attention to date.

The fact that our care system is stretched to the absolute limit means that 2.5 million unpaid carers have had to give up work or reduce their hours because they cannot get the help they need. Let us look at the increase in economic inactivity in over-50s since the covid pandemic, which there has been a lot of focus on. We know that the primary reason for this increase is poor physical and mental health and the increasing waiting lists in the NHS, which are now at a staggering 7 million. The second biggest reason, which no one has mentioned so far, is caring responsibilities.

Being forced out of the workplace is not good for families, especially in a cost of living crisis. It is not good for women and women’s equality, because women in their 50s and 60s are in the prime of their lives, with all the experience and knowledge they have. It is not good for businesses, which need to draw on the talents of everyone in our country in order to succeed, and it is not good for our economy, especially when the UK is stuck in a doom loop of low growth, poor productivity and ever higher taxes. If we want to help the over-50s to stay in work or get back into work, I suggest that the Chancellor spends a little more time focusing on the broken care system and a little less complaining about people spending too much time on golf courses.

We know that decent public services require a growing economy to put the money in, but the truth is that a growing economy depends on decent public services too. In modern Britain, social care and, I would also argue, childcare are as much a part of our economic infrastructure as the roads and the railways, and they should be at the heart of our economic policy and strategy for growth.

That is why Labour has made improving care one of the four missions of our industrial strategy—we understand that it is central to the workforce and economic growth. We are calling for a 10-year programme of investment and reform. That must include a new deal for the paid care workforce. We are never going to help family carers unless we have enough properly paid staff and tackle the record vacancies and high turnover rates. We need to have a much more joined-up system of health and care, so that families do not have to battle their way around the system, and a big shift in focus towards prevention and early intervention, to help people stay living fit, well and healthy at home for as long as possible.

We also need proper support for unpaid family carers, so that they can better balance work and family life, including improvements in flexible working and care leave. Opposition Members will remember that Labour women in the ’70s and ’80s argued that childcare was vital for children, the workforce, the economy and women’s equality, and that is the case we are making on social care too.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sure you will agree that sometimes politics seems very frantic, with things changing day by day, but sometimes I think it is all so unbelievably slow in understanding how the world has changed around us. My mum often says to me, “Why are you so surprised that there are so many of us olds? We’ve been born a long time.” That is true. We need to wake up to these changes and understand just how important a decent social care system is for families, the NHS, women’s equality and our wider economy too. The last Labour Government had a national carers strategy signed up to by senior Cabinet members at all levels, looking at all the things that impact on family life. I urge the Government to commit to that strategy today.