Women’s State Pension Age Communication: PHSO Report
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(6 days, 17 hours ago)
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Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions for advance sight of her statement, and I thank the ombudsman and his team for their work on this important matter.
In March this year, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman published its final report into the way that changes to the state pension age were communicated to women born in the 1950s. The report took over five years to produce and reflects the complexity of the issue. It spans a 30-year period across different Governments, dating back to Parliament’s decision in 1995 for the state pension age for men and women to be equalised, in a long-overdue move towards gender equality.
As the chief executive of the ombudsman set out, the Department for Work and Pensions fully co-operated with the ombudsman through its investigation and provided thousands of pages of detailed evidence to support it. It is because we took the work of the ombudsman so seriously that it was right for the Government to fully and properly consider the findings, and we were committed to working with Parliament to provide an appropriate and swift response. However, as the House will know, the general election was called less than two months later. Given that it has taken Labour five months since the general election to provide its findings, I am sure the Secretary of State would agree that there was insufficient time to take a considered and fair decision between the publication of the report and the election.
I am glad that the Secretary of State has picked this issue up since coming into office and has brought her statement to the House today. I will be considering it in more detail in the days and weeks to come, as well as the basis on which she has reached her conclusion. I am sure that the Government’s statement today will be a huge disappointment to WASPI women, and I recognise the strength of feeling about the issue.
As a constituency MP, I have met WASPI women who live in Faversham and Mid Kent and heard their personal stories. No doubt campaigners will note the Government’s apology for the decisions made between 2005 and 2007 that led to a 28-month delay in sending out letters, which the ombudsman identified as “maladministration”. But let us be clear: the decision to provide no compensation is the Government’s decision, and they need to own it. I am not going to let them get away with saying that there is no compensation because of a fictional black hole in the public finances. The country’s financial position now is a result of their political choices. They should not try to dodge responsibility by suggesting to WASPI women that, if times were different, they might have come to a different conclusion. Government compensation should always be based on what is fair and just.
That brings me to some questions. Given the announcement that they will not be providing financial compensation, will the Government put forward any other non-financial form of remedy for the women affected? Will the Secretary of State be involving the WASPI campaigners in the action plan she has referred to and what is the timeline for that?
The Secretary of State claimed that pensioners are better off under Labour, but let us not forget that it was the Conservatives who introduced and protected the triple lock, which has seen the state pension increase by £3,700 since 2010, and there are now 200,000 fewer pensioners living in absolute poverty. Does the right hon. Lady know how many women affected by her decision are on pension credit?
Labour’s own impact assessment shows that its decision to scrap the winter fuel payment will see 5.2 million women lose out. How many of those hit by those cuts to the winter fuel payment are also affected by today’s announcement?
Finally, given that the Government have dismissed the recommendations of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, will the Secretary of State set out what implications she sees for the future of the ombudsman?
Liz Kendall
I welcome the overall tone of the hon. Lady’s comments. I am glad that she is finally considering her party’s response to the ombudsman’s report, and I am sure that the whole House looks forward to its detailed response to the findings and recommendations, which were not provided when the Conservatives were in Government.
I am sorry that the hon. Lady still fails to take responsibility for the state of the public finances. We have taken full responsibility for that and have taken difficult decisions on the public finances. We have also taken this very difficult decision in response to the ombudsman’s report and have provided that to the House as quickly as we have been able, given the huge amount of information we have had to go through.
The hon. Lady asks about next steps. We have three clear things that we intend to do. We will produce a detailed action plan. We want to work with the ombudsman on that so that we can ensure that the delay, the maladministration and the 28-month delay in sending out notifications never happens again, and I am perfectly happy to consider working with the women to make sure we get that right. It is extremely important that, wherever possible, we provide personalised, tailored information. Pensions are a hugely complicated area, and we want people to be empowered with that information and knowledge. We have to do it in all sorts of different formats, because it is individual to the person, and we need to get that right in future.
The hon. Lady also mentioned pension credit and the winter fuel payment. I will say to her, as I did yesterday, that we have seen a 145% increase in the number of claims for pension credit since we launched our campaign. More than 42,000 more people are claiming pension credit now. We want to deal with yet another thing the Conservative Government left us with, which was 880,000 pensioners not getting the pension credit or the winter fuel payment they are entitled to.
These are difficult decisions. We are a responsible Government and we face up to our responsibilities. I look forward to Members on the Conservative Benches finally doing the same.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(1 week ago)
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Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
How many people who should get the winter fuel payment will get it this winter?
Liz Kendall
We intend to ensure that everybody who is entitled to pension credit, and therefore the winter fuel payment, claims it and gets it. We have seen a 145% increase in claims—far more than was ever achieved under the last Government. If the hon. Lady was so concerned about that, perhaps she should have taken action during her party’s 14 years in government.
Helen Whately
Unfortunately, the right hon. Lady simply will not give a straight answer. She will not tell the House what she knows; she knew that the Government’s choices would push 100,000 pensioners into poverty and she did not tell the House that, either. Let us try this question instead. The Government’s own figures show that pensioners applying now will have to wait until the spring to find out whether they will get winter fuel money. What is her advice to a pensioner sitting in the cold and wondering if they can afford to turn on their heating this Christmas?
Liz Kendall
If the hon. Lady cared so much about pensioners in the cold, why did her Government leave 880,000 not claiming pension credit? Why did they first promise to bring together housing benefit and pension credit in 2011 and never deliver it? This Government are taking action—42,500 more people are receiving pension credit now than when she left government. We are determined to act; perhaps she should apologise for her failure.
“Get Britain Working” White Paper
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Helen Whately
In the decade after we took over from Labour, we drove down unemployment and economic inactivity year after year, including youth unemployment, which went down by 400,000 after the mess we inherited from the last Labour Government. During the pandemic, we took unprecedented action to protect jobs and livelihoods, but since the pandemic we have faced a new and difficult challenge in this country: rising economic inactivity, particularly among young people. In government, we were tackling that. I know that, because as a Health Minister I was working on it. I am delighted that the right hon. Lady and the Health Secretary visited one of our WorkWell pilots just the other day. I was working on our fit note reforms, our youth offer, which helped a million young people, and our universal support scheme, which I now hear the Secretary of State has quietly rebranded as her own Connect to Work scheme.
Far from being cross that the Government are pinching our ideas, I welcome the right hon. Lady taking our work forward. She is making the right noises about how important it is to fix this area. Economic inactivity is a big problem for our economy and for each and every individual who risks being written off to a life on benefits. Knowing that, I am disappointed by the substance of what she is announcing today, because far from matching her rhetoric, it appears to be little more than a pot of money for local councils, some disparaging language about the work of jobcentres and a consultation that will be launched in the spring. Given that the Government have had 14 years to prepare for this moment, is that it?
Where are the reforms to benefits that will make material savings to the taxpayer, such as the £12 billion we committed to save in our manifesto? Where are the reforms to fit notes, which we had handed over, ready to go? Where is the Secretary of State’s plan for reforming the work capability assessments? She has banked the £3 billion of savings from our plan, but has failed to set out her own. Her big announcement is making benefits for young people conditional. Did she forget that they already are?
The fact is that the Secretary of State has dodged the tough decisions. Every day that she kicks the can down the road costs the taxpayer millions of pounds. At this rate, spending on sickness benefits will rise to £100 billion by the end of this Parliament. They are taking that money from farmers, from pensioners and from businesses. To get people off benefits, we need jobs for them to go into. Those are the very jobs that businesses are saying, since the Budget, they will no longer be hiring for. While the right hon. Lady tries to get people into work, her Chancellor is busy destroying jobs—50,000 jobs lost from her first Budget alone.
If the Secretary of State wants to get more 18-year-olds into work, she should have a word with her Chancellor, who has made it so that from April it will cost £5,000 more for a business to employ them. She should have a word with her Business Secretary, whose Employment Rights Bill will, according to the Government’s own impact assessment, make it less likely for employers to take on young people. The Government cannot solve this problem on their own. Businesses are the engine of our economy that create jobs for people to do. It is telling that I cannot see a single business representative on the new Labour Market Advisory Board.
I did hear the right hon. Lady talk about some new partnerships, but this announcement is such a song and dance about so little that I feel sure she will qualify for one of her own Royal Shakespeare Company apprenticeships. She has kicked the can so far down the road that her new partner, the Premier League, is sure to be on the phone by the end of the day.
May I for a moment cut through the word soup of the announcement? It is time for the right hon. Lady to tell the House some facts. How many people will it help into work, and by when? What is the total she is saving the taxpayer? When will she reach her 80% employment target? What return on investment is she expecting from these plans? How will she measure her success or failure? This is so far from the bold grasping of the nettle that she is making it out to be and that this country needs for our economy, for taxpayers and for the millions of people missing out on the purpose and freedom that work brings. It is simply not good enough.
Liz Kendall
May I say gently to the hon. Lady, who I personally like and have a great deal of time for, that the only people who dodge difficult decisions on welfare are the Conservatives? The facts speak for themselves. By the end of this Parliament, the Office for Budget Responsibility says that 420,000 more people will be on health-related universal credit benefits, rising from a third now to a half at the end of the Parliament. That is her Government’s legacy. One in eight of all our young people are not in education, employment or training. We have seen a doubling in the number of young people out of work due to long-term sickness and a doubling of young people out of work because of mental health problems. After 14 years in government, who does she think is responsible for that? I am afraid that the truth is staring her in the face: the Conservatives are now the party of welfare, and Labour is the party of work.
The hon. Lady talks about British businesses. I know only too well the pressures that many businesses face. We have spoken to the CBI, the Federation of Small Businesses and the British Chambers of Commerce, and they are keen to work with us on our proposals. They know that their members have hundreds of thousands of vacancies that they need to fill, one in three of which is because of skills gaps. They know that 300,000 people every single year fall out of work due to a health condition. They need support to try to tackle that problem. I believe that the Department for Work and Pensions and jobcentres should serve businesses’ needs and aspirations, not be the place of last resort. That is precisely what our reforms will deliver.
Finally, the biggest challenge we face today is the growing number of people out of work or at risk of falling out of work due to health problems or a disability. Our entire employment and benefits system is simply not geared up to deal with that. We will take examples of good practice from wherever we find them, but we have got to go much further. We need big reforms, not easy slogans that say people just felt a bit too bluesy to work, which do nothing to help people get to grips with the real issues in their lives. We are facing up to our responsibilities and the difficult decisions necessary to get Britain working again. It is time the hon. Lady and her party did the same.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Mr Speaker
I call the new shadow Secretary of State, and welcome her to her post.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
May I say how nice it is to be sitting opposite the right hon. Lady again, albeit, regrettably, having swapped places with her? I enjoyed our exchanges on social care during the last Parliament, and appreciated our constructive conversations during the pandemic, although, given how well she knows the care brief, I suspect that she was gutted, as I was, to see the incoming Government abandon the care cap and scrap more than £50 million of funding for social care training. The consistent feedback from jobcentres was that the biggest barrier to young people taking up job opportunities in social care was lack of career progression, hence our reforms to create a career path for care workers and investment in training. Has the right hon. Lady spoken to her counterpart in the Department of Health and Social Care about the impact of those social care cuts on her ambitions to get more young people working or learning?
Liz Kendall
I, too, welcome the hon. Lady to her post. As she has said, while we will always have our political differences we have also worked closely and constructively on issues that matter across the House, such as the terrible problems facing social care during the pandemic. I will continue that work, and I hope that the hon. Lady will as well, in her new role.
The hon. Lady asked about the impact of what is happening in social care on people’s opportunities and chances to learn. I have already had many discussions with, among others, members of integrated care boards, and they are passionate about the opportunities that exist to get more people into work and enable them to get on in their work, including jobs in social care. Joined-up working between the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Work and Pensions will be at the heart of our plans to get Britain working, because, unlike some Opposition Members, we do not find it acceptable for 2.8 million people to be locked out of the workforce owing to long-term sickness. We have a proper plan to get Britain working and growing again.
Helen Whately
The right hon. Lady will know that under the Conservative Government youth unemployment fell by 380,000, and that we were tackling inactivity with our WorkWell programme, helping people to stay in work or return to work, which I am delighted to see the right hon. Lady continuing. Unfortunately, however, as a result of her Government’s Budget and Employment Rights Bill, businesses will slash the number of their employees. Moreover, the Government have just broken another promise and hiked up university fees. What advice would the right hon. Lady give a young person who is currently out of work and education, and must choose between worse job prospects and more expensive university degrees thanks to her Government’s choices?
Liz Kendall
The hon. Lady’s party left nearly a million young people not in education, employment or training, and almost a record number of people—2.8 million— out of work owing to long-term sickness. They failed to introduce reforms to join up work, health and skills properly, and they have not learnt from those mistakes. I am proud that this Government are investing an extra £240 million to get Britain working again, giving people the opportunities that they need to work and build a better life.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
The Conservatives are the party of work and aspiration, and once again, we left office with unemployment at a historic low. We all know that Labour always leaves unemployment higher than when it came into office, but rarely has it seemed in such a hurry to achieve that. Its first Budget will, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, cost the country 50,000 jobs in the next few years alone. What assessment has the right hon. Lady made of the cost to her Department of those job losses?
Liz Kendall
May I gently say this to the hon. Lady? She should be apologising, because we have record numbers of people out of work due to long-term sickness; one in eight young people is not in education, employment or training; and people are locked out of the world of work because the Conservatives failed to make proper plans to get people into work and on in their work. Until Conservative Members face up to their responsibilities, and to the cost to the taxpayer of their mistakes in not getting people with long-term sickness into work—£25 billion extra over the course of the forecast period—they will remain on the Opposition Benches.
Helen Whately
I wonder if the Secretary of State did not hear my earlier question; I said that I was grateful that she is continuing the work that we did in government, through the WorkWell programme, to help people in ill health into work by joining up healthcare and employment. However, the point I was just making, to which she did not respond, was that 50,000 jobs will be lost as a result of Labour’s Budget. That is not the only thing frightening the life out of businesses at the moment—
Oral Answers
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
The Minister says this Government back social care—I would love to see what the reality would be if they were against it. We already know that the Conservatives have completely failed to deliver their flagship policy of a cap on care costs, and over Easter we learned that they have broken the rest of their promises on social care too. The £500 million promised for the care workforce has been cut in half; the £300 million promised for housing in care has been slashed by two thirds; and as for the £600 million of other promises, your guess is as good as mine, Mr Speaker. They have not had the courage to announce this to Parliament or the nous to grasp that if people are not kept in their own homes, they end up stuck in hospital, with all the knock-on consequences for NHS waiting times and emergency care. Will the Minister tell us where all that money has gone? Why on earth should older and disabled people and their families ever believe the Conservatives on social care again?
Helen Whately
Out of that, I can pick one thing we agree on: the importance of helping people to live independently at home for longer and social care as a part of that. I say to the hon. Lady, as I said a moment ago, that we have not cut a penny of funding from our commitments to adult social care, both on adult social reform and on the historic £7.5 billion of adult social care funding announced in the autumn statement. We are forging ahead with our reforms, with the workforce at their heart, because the workforce is crucial, hand in hand with the digitisation of social care, improving data, joining up health and social care, and supporting unpaid carers.
Covid Pandemic: Testing of Care Home Residents
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care if he will make a statement on the testing of care home residents during the covid pandemic.
The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)
The covid-19 pandemic was an unprecedented global health emergency involving a novel coronavirus that we were still learning about day by day, even hour by hour. Even in those early days, the UK Government and colleagues in my Department were clear that testing would be crucial. That is why the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), set ambitious testing targets to drive a true step change in the quantity of tests, because he knew that testing would be a vital lifeline until vaccines could be developed and proven safe and effective.
The importance of testing was never in doubt, and there was full agreement on that in every part of Government, from the chief medical officer to the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister. But in a situation where we had the capacity to test, at most, a few thousand each day, tough decisions about prioritisation had to be made. Those decisions were taken on the best public health advice available. Thanks in no small part to the bold testing ambitions driven by the Government, we were able to build the largest testing network in Europe.
I put on record my thanks to all those who worked tirelessly on this mission day and night, from civil servants to the NHS and, of course, our incredible social care workforce, who did so much to look after their residents. They all deserve our lasting gratitude.
The situation in our care homes was extremely difficult during the pandemic, not just in England but across the UK and, indeed, across the world. Because of the vulnerability of residents and the large number of people who come in and out of care homes, it is vital that we learn lessons.
It is equally vital that we learn those lessons in the right context. Selective snippets of WhatsApp conversations give a limited and, at times, misleading insight into the machinery of government at the time. The covid inquiry is important so that we have the right preparations in place to meet future threats and challenges.
Liz Kendall
Throughout the covid pandemic, Ministers repeatedly claimed that they had thrown a protective ring around England’s care homes and that they had always followed the evidence and scientific advice, but WhatsApp messages from the former Health Secretary revealed in today’s Daily Telegraph suggest that nothing could be further from the truth.
Will the Minister confirm that the chief medical officer first advised the Government to test all residents going into care homes in early April 2020? Can she explain why the former Health Secretary rejected that advice and failed to introduce community testing until 14 August—a staggering four months later? Can she publish the evidence that following the advice would have muddied the waters, as the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) claimed? And can she confirm that 17,678 people died of covid in care homes between the CMO’s advice and the Government finally deciding to act? She should know, because she was responsible for care homes at the time.
Former Ministers are touring the studios this morning claiming that this delay was simply because there were not enough tests. Where is the evidence for that? Even if tests were in short supply, why were care homes residents not prioritised when the devastating impact of covid was there for all to see?
Nobody denies that dealing with covid was unbelievably difficult, especially in the early days, but care home residents and staff were simply not a priority. Yet the former Prime Minister and former Health Secretary were first warned about the emerging horror in care homes by my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) in March 2020. I myself raised the lack of testing in care homes with the Health Secretary on 8 April, 28 April, 19 May and 17 June 2020, long before the CMO’s advice was finally followed.
The Minister will no doubt say that all these issues will be looked at in the public inquiry, but its findings will not be available for years. The families of the 43,000 care home residents who lost their lives will be appalled at the former Health Secretary attempting to rewrite history—an attempt that will turn to ashes along with his TV career. We need more humility and less celebrity from the right hon. Member for West Suffolk, and above all we need answers.
Helen Whately
It is relatively easy for the hon. Member to come to the House today and make these highly political points. Knowing how she and I worked together in the pandemic, and that she and I talked about all that we were doing to look after people in care homes, I am shocked and disappointed by the tone she has taken today, when we are dealing with extremely serious questions.
I will turn first to some of the difficult prioritisation decisions that were made, given the limited quantity of testing we had at the beginning of the pandemic. The Government followed the expert public health advice available at the time. We had the capacity to test just 3,000 cases a day in mid-March, and I am sure colleagues will understand why the health advice at the time was to prioritise those working on our NHS frontline and, for instance, the testing of people in hospitals and care homes who had symptoms. In fact, the courts have already agreed that our prioritisation decisions on testing were completely rational.
As we dramatically ramped up testing capacity, we also adjusted that prioritisation in line with the public health advice and the capacity, so by mid-April—just a month later—with testing capacity exceeding 38,000, we were in a position to test more widely. In fact, that is reflected in our adult social care plan published on 15 April, which made it clear that everyone discharged from a hospital to a care home should be tested even if asymptomatic, and that all discharged patients, regardless of the result of their test, should be isolated for 14 days. It is worth reflecting just what a dramatic increase in testing the Government oversaw, from just 3,000 in March 2020 to over 38,000 in mid-April, to over 100,000 by mid-May, to the point where we could test many millions in a single week. We established the largest testing network in Europe from a standing start, and the science proves that it saved lives.
The hon. Lady asked about the content of the WhatsApp messages that have been published. I say to her that it is a selection from a larger quantity of messages. Clearly, while there were discussions and debates between Ministers and colleagues, partly on WhatsApp, there were also meetings and conversations and other forums in which advice was given and decisions made. A huge quantity of that is with the public inquiry, but I can say to her that, for instance, a meeting to discuss the implementation of the advice on testing was not referenced in the WhatsApp messages she is talking about. There is an email following the exchange to which she is referring that says, “We can press ahead straightaway with hospitals testing patients who are going into care homes. And we should aspire, as soon as capacity allows and when we have worked out an operational way of delivering this, that everyone going into a care home from the community could be tested.” As I say, she is basing her comments on very selective information.
As I said, the hon. Lady knows how the Government, and me personally, strained every sinew, worked day and night, and did everything in our power to help people, and specifically the most vulnerable, during the pandemic. She and I spoke about it regularly during our frequent calls. In fact, at the time I appreciated her perspective, questions and insights from her own area of Leicester. I say to her that we should go about this discussion in the right way for the country. This is not the time to play political games. We should look to save lives. That is the purpose of the public inquiry: to learn lessons in the right way in case this should ever happen again.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(2 years ago)
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Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
Let’s just tell it like it is on the Government’s record on social care reform. Their cap on care costs was first promised 10 years ago. In 2015, they delayed it and in 2017 they scrapped it. In 2019, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) again promised to fix the crisis in social care, but last month the Chancellor buried the policy, once and for all. After 12 long years, what have Conservative Members got to show on social care: the highest ever staff vacancies; millions left without the care they need; hospitals full of people who do not need to be there; and families picking up the strain. Isn’t the truth on social care, just as with our economy, transport, housing and schools, that the Conservatives have run out of excuses and run out of road, and the country deserves a change?
Helen Whately
We have delayed our social care charging reforms because we listened to those in the system and we heard local authorities asking for more time to prepare. Importantly, we have allowed local authorities to keep the money allocated to that in their bank accounts to fund some of the current pressures on social care. I ask the hon. Lady to recognise the record funding settlement for social care in the autumn statement—£7.5 billion for social care over the next two years—which she has not even acknowledged. That is coupled with the fact that we are pressing full steam ahead with our system-wide reforms to social care, with funding of more than £1 billion to support the workforce and innovations in social care and to transform the quality and access to social care across the country.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
The previous Health Secretary promised £500 million social care discharge funding for this winter, but it is 1 November and not a single penny of that money has been seen. I am afraid that the political chaos and incompetence over the last few weeks means that local services cannot properly plan and thousands more elderly people are trapped in hospitals when they do not need to be, with all the knock-on consequences for the rest of the NHS. Will the Minister now tell us: is this money still available? When will it be released? Can she guarantee that it will be genuinely new funding, not found from cuts made elsewhere?
Helen Whately
I am sure the hon. Member heard the answer I gave a moment ago to a similar question. I absolutely acknowledge the challenge of discharges. The challenge is nothing new, but it has indeed worsened, in part due to the availability of social care. That is one reason why the Government have announced the £500 million discharge fund. I am just a few days into this job—[Interruption.] I am looking at the proposals on how this will—[Interruption.] If she will listen, I am looking to make sure that we allocate that money effectively, because we know that money is tight and we must absolutely make sure that every penny of the funding is well spent on improving the discharge from hospital to people’s homes.
Social Care Reform
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State to make a statement on the Government’s plans for social care reform.
The Minister for Care (Helen Whately)
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, and for giving me the opportunity to talk about social care reform. I start by paying tribute to carers, paid and unpaid, for all they do in looking after people in their homes and in care homes every single day with kindness and compassion. To any who may happen to be watching or listening today, I say “Thank you for what you do.”
Over the past year in government, we have rightly focused on supporting social care through the pandemic. This has included an extra £1.8 billion of funding, sending more than 2 billion items of free personal protective equipment to care providers, distributing more than 120 million covid tests to social care and vaccinating hundreds of thousands of care home residents and most of the care workforce.
While the pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges to social care, it has also strengthened the argument for reform, and we now have the opportunity to build back better in social care. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a care system for the future, and I am hugely ambitious. I want a care system in which we can be confident, for our grans and grandads, mums and dads, brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren and, indeed, ourselves. I want people to be able to get the care that they need when they need it, and to have choices—to live life to the full in the way they want, living independently and part of a community for as long as possible, without facing an astronomical bill.
I want to join up health and care around people, so that it works as one system dedicated to meeting the needs of individuals, and giving them the personal care they want and need to live their lives to the full. I want the care workforce to be properly recognised and valued for what they do—for their skills, their compassion and their commitment. I want them to have more training, more opportunities and more prospects for career progression. I am committed to supporting unpaid carers not only in the care they provide, but with their own health and well-being, so that they can live their own lives as well as caring for others.
We are already taking steps on the road to reform. The health and care Bill will introduce Care Quality Commission oversight of local authorities’ provision of social care. It will also help to join up health and social care by putting integrated care systems on a statutory footing. We are working on our long-term plan for social care, and we will bring forward our proposals for social care reform later this year.
Liz Kendall
It has been 100 weeks since the Prime Minister promised to
“fix the crisis in social care”
with a plan he had already prepared, to give people the dignity and security they deserve. Since then, almost 42,000 care home residents have died from covid-19. Two million people have applied for support but have had their requests refused, and tens of thousands have had to sell their homes to pay for care. Families have hit breaking point, and staff have been appallingly let down. Even after all the horrors of the pandemic, nine out of 10 councils say that they face care budget cuts this year.
This week, we learned that Ministers cannot even be bothered to have a meeting to finally come up with the goods. That is not delivering dignity; it is abdicating responsibility, so can I try again with the Minister? When precisely will we see the Government’s plan? A vague commitment to some time later this year will not convince anyone, after all the delays and broken promises. Will the plan include a cap on care costs, so people’s life savings are not wiped out? That has been repeatedly promised and was legislated for seven years ago, but it has still not been delivered. Will there be proper proposals for people with disabilities, who make up a third of the users and half the budget for social care, but have been entirely absent from the debate? Where is the decent workforce plan to ensure that frontline carers get the pay and conditions they deserve, and that we end endemic staff shortages? Will unpaid family carers finally get the help they need, so that their own health does not suffer and they are not forced to choose between holding down a job and caring for the people they love?
In the century of ageing, we cannot build back a better future for Britain without a decent system for social care. This is as much a part of our infrastructure as the roads and railways are. Our country urgently needs a plan. The time for excuses is over. When will the Government deliver?
Helen Whately
Of course we have focused on supporting social care through the pandemic over the past 18 months; that absolutely had to be the right thing to do when facing an unprecedented challenge. During the pandemic we not only supported social care, including, as I said, over £1.8 billion of extra funding direct to the care sector, but supported local authorities with over £6 billion of extra funding. But yes, we are determined to bring forward proposals for social care reform. We have been absolutely clear that we shall do that. The hon. Lady asked about particular meetings. Actually, the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister talk about social care reform all the time. In fact, I spoke to the Prime Minister only last week about social care reform. These are complex matters. The hon. Lady will know that nearly 25 years ago, Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair said that we needed reform of social care, but during the 13 years of Labour government, was there a plan for social care reform? No, there was not. We are the Government who are going to bring forward social care reforms. I would welcome her support for that. We are a Government who deliver. We have delivered Brexit, we are delivering vaccinations at a phenomenal pace, and we will deliver social care reform.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Helen Whately
I have huge respect for the right hon. Lady and her work in many areas, but I am disappointed by her language. She will appreciate that, together, the Department, local authorities and the care sector are working hard on how to bring forward the right package of reforms for the system. We have already taken some of the first steps on that road. For instance, the health and social care Bill includes plans to strengthen oversight of the social care system. That is an important step, but it is the beginning, not the end, of the social care reform road.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
Six hundred and eighty-five days ago, the Prime Minister promised to fix the crisis in social care to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve. Since then, more than 32,000 elderly people have died from covid-19 in care homes, millions of care workers and families have felt abandoned and pushed to breaking point, and 300 elderly people have been forced to sell their homes to pay for their care every single week. Does the Minister think that has given people security, let alone dignity, and will she tell the country, after more than a decade in power, specifically when her Government will deliver?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Helen Whately
I share the hon. Gentleman’s sorrow for the lives that have been lost among the health and social care workforce during the pandemic. I am determined that we will support and continue to support our health and social care workforce through these difficult times. One of the things that I want to achieve for our social care workforce, for whom I am truly ambitious, is that rather than doing something one-off for the pandemic, we should come up with a workforce strategy that will improve the opportunities for those working in social care to develop their careers, with a real career progression in working in that sector. That will be part of our social care reform proposals.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
Despite repeated promises, the truth is that someone would be better off stacking shelves at Morrisons than caring for older or disabled people, and that is simply not good enough for our country. Can the Minister confirm that the Government’s covid infection control fund had to be used to improve pay so that staff did not have to work for more than one care home and could actually afford to self-isolate? If that is the case, will she commit to permanently enshrining these improvements across the sector to keep all care users and all care workers safe?
Helen Whately
In response to the hon. Lady’s question about the use of the infection control fund, it was available to providers to use in a range of ways to keep their residents safe from covid, including, for instance, reducing the movement of staff between one care home and another, which is often part of the service model of how care is provided, and also, as I mentioned earlier, funding full sick pay for staff who needed to self-isolate because of covid. I am determined that as part of our social care reforms that we will be bringing forward, we will look at how best we can support the workforce.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Helen Whately
We have been testing and have prioritised testing in care homes going back as far as May, and we have been carrying out whole care home testing. We are now testing over 500,000 staff and residents in care homes every week. Now, as testing capacity increases, we are launching the visitor testing trial with 20 care homes across Hampshire, Devon and Cornwall. We will use the lessons from that trial to roll out testing more widely across the country as fast as we possibly can.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
I am afraid the Government’s pilot scheme simply fails to understand the scale or urgency of the task. The average time someone spends in a care home before they pass away is two years, so after eight months of not being able to visit, families do not have a moment to lose. If the Government believe that weekly tests make it safe for care home staff to go to work, why not just do the same for families? Will the Minister now agree that a proportion of the 157,000 tests that are currently spare capacity every day will be ring-fenced for family visits so that we can safely bring all families back together in time for Christmas?
Helen Whately
I absolutely want to enable relatives to go and visit their loved ones in care homes, but we have to remember that we are against a backdrop where covid is incredibly cruel to those living in care homes. We have seen outbreaks that have gone from one resident across to almost all residents within a few days, with staff also affected, so we have to get the balance right. We have to make sure that we do this in a way that is safe to residents and staff. That is why we are carrying out the trial to learn the lessons, so that we do it right and so we can then safely roll out testing and more visiting across the whole country.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
Families with loved ones in care homes are desperate to start visiting again, but are banned from doing so in swathes of the country with extra restrictions. The Government’s own carers advisory group says that visits are essential for residents’ health, and that, to make them safe, relatives should be treated like key workers—with regular testing. Will the Minister now please put that testing in place and lift the blanket ban on care home visits in lockdown areas, so that we can help to bring all families back together again?
Helen Whately
The hon. Member makes an important point, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines) a moment ago, about the importance of visiting for those in care homes, and for their relatives and loved ones. We are striking the difficult balance between protecting those in care homes and ensuring that they have visits wherever possible, but these visits must be done safely. I have heard from the sector about the aspiration for some family members to be treated as care workers—for instance, if they visit the care home regularly. As we expand testing, I very much intend that we should test some visitors—and am making the case for doing so—but it is all part of how we expand and use our testing resources.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Helen Whately
Yes, I can confirm that. Every Care Quality Commission-registered care home in England has been offered testing. Care homes for those who are over 65 and with dementia have been offered repeat testing. We have now opened up repeat testing to care homes for working age adults.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
Following on from that question, Ministers initially promised weekly testing for care home staff by 6 July. They then abandoned that pledge and said that routine tests would not happen until 7 September. With more than 15,000 deaths from covid-19 in care homes so far and with winter and the flu season fast approaching, regular weekly testing of care home staff is critical. Will the Minister now guarantee that every care home will have weekly testing for their staff by Monday to help all of our loved ones in residential care keep safe?
Helen Whately
We are indeed determined to support social care, and particularly the care homes, with repeat, regular testing. As the hon. Member knows, because we have spoken about it, there has been a delay with our repeat testing of care homes because of a particular issue with some of the test kits. That was communicated to her and to the sector. As I said in my previous answer, we have now been able to offer repeat testing to all care homes for older people, to open up the portal to those care homes with working age adults as residents, and to initiate our second round of repeat testing for the older sector.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Helen Whately
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I know that the current restriction on visiting is hard for residents in care homes and their families, and has a real impact on health and wellbeing. We are updating our visitor guidance and intend to publish it soon.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
I, too, wish the Minister a very happy birthday.
I am sure the Minister will agree that lessons must be learned from what has happened so far, because the virus is not over for social care. With 13,375 deaths from covid-19 in care homes, what does she think she should have done differently?
Helen Whately
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that there will be a time when we will look back and learn lessons, and I wish that not so many people had died in social care, but right now we are looking ahead. We are making sure that we have in place the plans to support the social care sector through the months ahead, and we are also pressing ahead with work on social care reform.
Social Care
Debate between Liz Kendall and Helen Whately(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Helen Whately
The shadow Minister is shaking her head; I know that there is more to do.
At times this has been a heated debate, but I heard on both sides truly constructive suggestions for how we can solve our social care challenges. That gives me much hope for cross-party consensus. I heard suggestions from my hon. Friends the Members for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) and for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), whom I thank for his kind words welcoming me to my job. He set the bar high for me to meet.
I am fully aware of the challenges that face our care system and I have no illusions as to the scale of the challenge facing us. In the next 10 years, we expect the number of people over 75 to go up by 1.5 million, and the number of people under 65 with care needs is growing, too. We have a system that is under pressure and the demands are only going to grow.
Liz Kendall
In the spirit of being constructive, let me mention, as I did during my speech, the huge and rising pressures on social care. There are 120,000 vacancies here and now. We need more than half a million care workers in a decade’s time just to keep up with rising demand—that is not to improve the system, but just to keep pace with demand. The proposed points-based system of immigration will be catastrophic for social care. Will the Minister meet me and others who work in this area to explore the potential for a separate route into social care, so that we can avoid further pressure and worse care for the people for whom we love and care?
Helen Whately
What I would like to emphasise in response to the hon. Lady’s point is the importance of our recognising, valuing and making sure that social care is an attractive career. In that way, those who are already working in social care will continue to work in social care. It will be for us to build the workforce that we need for the future.
Helen Whately
I am conscious of time, so I must now come to my conclusion.
We all bring our experiences to our work, and, as I conclude this debate, I want to mention one of mine. When my grandmother was 100 years old, she was admitted to hospital and she stayed there for five months. She was signed off as ready to leave numerous times, but each time the failure to find a care package delayed her discharge, during which time she would acquire an infection, further delaying her discharge. She was eventually discharged, but only in time for her to die—thankfully, peacefully at home. This is a cycle with which too many people are familiar, and it means that our hospitals are looking after people who would be better off at home.
As I have said, I am under no illusions about the challenges that we face in social care. The problem that I have just described is nothing new, but let us be the generation that solves it. That is a commitment that we as a Government have made. We will fix the crisis in social care. We will deliver the funding that is needed now to stabilise the system. We will find a long-term solution to the growing need for care and seek to build a cross-party consensus on this. We are committed to the view that the prerequisite of that solution is that no one needing care will have to sell their home to pay for that care.
We will not be supporting the Opposition’s motion tonight, but where I think we can all agree is on the importance and the urgency of reform of social care. As we bring forward those plans, I look forward to working with colleagues from all parts of this House. Just as we had a consensus in the 1940s on the NHS, the time has now come for a new consensus on social care. Let us be the generation that works together and makes our care system work for all those who so badly need it.
Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the question.