Care Sector

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB)]

My Lords, I will be brief. Other Peers have spoken eloquently and very adequately covered this subject. I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kingsmill, for leading this debate. My wife and I have a personal interest in this subject. Our daughter had a severe learning disability; she had to be fed, dressed and toileted. She could not speak and latterly had two full-time carers. Hoists were required to lift her out of bed, et cetera. Sadly, she died last year, aged 42.

In 1990, we formed a business with charitable status in the north-east of England to provide care and support for people with learning disabilities, which I chaired until three years ago. At that time, we merged with a larger organisation, Prospects. It is a Christian organisation and I am currently vice-chair of that company. We employ more than 600 wonderful people to care for people with learning disabilities across the United Kingdom. We provide residential care, domiciliary care with personal budgets, and a range of other services for local authorities.

Our biggest challenge by far is recruiting, retaining and adequately rewarding our staff—our carers. The tragedy is that we compete in a market with the stacking of supermarket shelves. The responsibilities bear no comparison. Having to recruit staff on low wages to care for vulnerable people is an unacceptable model. We want to pay the living wage and fully intend to do so, but not only is the relentless economic pressure on this sector driving providers out of business but it is proving difficult to maintain the high standards we want to provide.

The tendering process adds to that economic pressure. Some of our contracts pay £12 an hour. This is to cover not only salaries, management and overhead costs but food, living expenses and training. The sums just do not add up. In some companies in our sector, staff turnover is 20%. Training costs are huge and recruitment costs are high. Dependency on agencies when staff leave adds to the economic pressure because of the high charges we have to pay for agency staff.

I am not making a political point when I say this: this Government and the next have no alternative but to bear down on public expenditure, but every year longevity and costs increase. We need a different model. I hope that the Minister will give this matter his serious attention. We are stretching the loyalty of some of the most amazing people in our society to the absolute limit.