Elderly Social Care (Insurance) Bill [HL]

Lord Hendy Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, this Bill fails to address the crisis properly. Cuts of nearly 40% in government support have driven local authorities to cut the cost of social care, although demand for it has, in contrast, increased. Demand now runs at 1.9 million requests per year, more than 5,000 per day. Cost-reduction has been achieved by outsourcing social care to private companies. Whereas 90% of social care was provided in-house 25 years ago, only 10% is today.

That is because outsourcing social care is cheaper. How is that achieved? Simple: the earnings of the workers are slashed. Twenty-five per cent of our 1.49 million care workers are on zero-hours contracts. Many are falsely declared to be self-employed, and some forced to work under personal service companies with no employment rights. The career progression and pensions that care workers had when in local authority employ have evaporated. The democratic input they had into the conditions of their working life is no more. Then, their unions bargained collectively to set terms and conditions across the sector. Employers knew that they would not be undercut by competitors. Workers knew they would enjoy NJC conditions.

Their voice is now silenced. Private employers do not bargain collectively. They compete for tenders on the basis of the lowest labour costs they think they can get away with. Terms are set unilaterally on a “take it or leave it” basis. That is why there is a 10% vacancy rate and a third of care workers leave the sector within 12 months of starting. That is not merely damaging for the standard of life and dignity of care workers; it is catastrophic for those receiving care. They never know who is going to attend them from one day to the next. Caring relationships become impossible.

Neither this Bill nor the Government will give us the national care service the country needs, but there is one step we could take which would improve the lot of carers and the cared-for: the restoration of collective bargaining across the sector. Professor Lydia Hayes wrote a book a few years ago called 8 Good Reasons Why Adult Social Care Needs Sectoral Collective Bargaining. I commend it to the House.