Older Persons: Human Rights and Care

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, by far the worst abuse of older people is poverty. This welcome debate covers many other forms of abuse—ageism, elder abuse, inadequate care—and they are all very important. However, it behoves us to remember that, according to official figures, some 1.9 million older people live in poverty, which means that their income is below 60% of median earnings in this country. That is one pensioner in six.

Half a century ago, we were all very conscious of pensioner poverty. For one reason or another—perhaps because of better pensions and the rise in home ownership—that recognition has declined. Now, instead, people are talking about intergenerational fairness, which means giving older people less and younger people more. The research, including the excellent book by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has emphasised that the older generation has done increasingly well while the younger generation—generation rent—struggles. There is something in this, but it is a gross and important oversimplification. Rather than thinking of the elderly as one generation, we should think of two groups of elderly people. One group—I hope noble Lords will forgive me—is people like us, who are doing quite well. We enjoy wealth in the form of owning valuable homes that can be easily turned into cash through equity release. That wealth will be tax-privileged when we die, and on top of that we have had the chance to build pensions through our lifetimes: employer schemes, personal pensions and self-enrolment, which is now adding to our numbers. Meanwhile, the state has gone out of its way to hand us more dosh.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, referred approvingly to the triple lock. The triple lock is an absolute disaster, making us richer at the expense of much poorer working people—free bus passes; at 75, free TV licences. Last night I got home to find a large tax bill and with it, guess what? A piece of paper awarding me my winter fuel payment of £100—tax free, naturally. I have dispatched it to charity.

However, another group, the 1.9 million I referred to earlier, is materially seriously deprived. They do not own, they usually rent. They may not have adequate state pensions because they have not had the earnings record to get one, so they are forced back on to means-tested help. If they need care outside their own homes, they will be forced back on to the care that the local authority can provide. Local authorities now provide care only to people in gross need—care that is so cheap that it struggles to be inadequate. Those people cannot even look forward to leaving their struggling kids an inheritance.

These problems stem, in part, from deep social inequalities affecting all generations at all ages. However, in the case of the elderly there is one other factor that we should not ignore. It is a combination of the bad effects of two aspects of our politics. From the right has stemmed extreme restraint over public expenditure—austerity, if you like. That lies, for example, at the heart of the care crisis. At the end of the day, when all is said and done, the answer to the care crisis is more money. But I fear that we on the left have also made a big mistake through our belief that all state benefits must be universal. There has been a liberal wing drifting out from academia, and it still permeates large sections of the left. So we all get these universal handouts, I get my fuel allowance, and the result is that the money is not available to target the true causes of poverty in old age.

Yesterday I and many other Members of this House attended the memorial service of the great Lord Joffe. He was my ally in this matter. When we sat on the Commission on Long-Term Care in 1999, the majority wanted care to be a universal benefit, free to all who need it, paid for in full to the rich. Joel and I argued instead that the top priority for scarce public money was to spend it on better care services for the poor, not on these huge handouts to subsidise the rich and, more particularly, their children, who would inherit the money from them. Life is about hard choices. We can have universal benefits for the elderly, or we can target the poverty among the elderly that is making the lives of so many a misery. Alas, we cannot spend the same money on both, but I know which I would put first.