Care Workers: Professional Register

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

As the noble Lord says, pay is one of the important issues when people consider what career to take, but also how much that career is valued. One of the reasons we are looking at this voluntary register, but also the skills passport, is to understand the current layout of the sector. There are a number of different qualifications at the moment and before we consider what should be mandatory and make sure that everybody is aligned in terms of qualifications, we want to understand the care force out there. Some 56% of those in the care sector, for example, do not have any qualifications and we want to make sure that we address that.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, the Economic Affairs Committee report of some two years ago estimated that £8.6 billion was needed just to get back to where we were 10 years ago. This money, which the Government are promising, is not available now. The need is now and the Government themselves have said that they want to deal with the problem of beds that are blocked in the NHS. That can happen only if the care workers are there and encouraged to be so, and that is about training and pay. At the moment, really good, wonderful people get paid more for stacking shelves in Tesco than they get for carrying out this work. Will my noble friend persuade the Treasury that this money needs to be made available now?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend makes a very important point that we need to make sure that this is an attractive career and that people feel valued. One of the reasons we launched the Made with Care campaign in November, which is running over five months, is to attract more people to the sector. Some of the money we have made available is to make sure that the sector is more attractive to people who want to work in it and that people in local authorities push the care home owners to pay their staff more.