Adult Social Care (Adult Social Care Committee Report)

Lord Polak Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the right reverend Prelate. In the same way, it was a great honour to have been a member of the Adult Social Care Committee. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the other members of the committee who took me along with them.

It was a learning experience for me, and there are one or two points that I would like to pick up. I notice that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is, sadly, not in her place. The thing I learned from her is something that we do not always think about: she talked a lot about the issue of ageing without children. I thank God that I have family and that we looked after my mother, who I will come on to in a minute. It is something that you do not appreciate until you hear it. The noble Baroness is a great champion for understanding that this will affect many, many people across the country. I was glad to learn that from her.

Similarly, I was very much a supporter of the suggestion, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, that we ought to have a commissioner for care and support. Just as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is a champion for her issue, we need a champion who can help my noble friend the Minister and other members of the Government to focus on this. Otherwise, it gets trodden down and nobody really takes responsibility; it is too big and, in the end, nothing really happens.

I made a plea last time I spoke on this subject and I make no apologies for repeating it. Looking around the House, I say to everybody: the one thing I learned is that it is important to take politics out of social care. Let us get politics out of it and let us try to help.

In the end, for me, it was an experience that suddenly became practical. During the time that we were sitting as a committee, my mother took ill in Liverpool; she sadly passed a few months ago. What is overridingly important is to have something that we missed—we did not understand what to do as a family; I have just made a note to call it a “guide for the ignorant”. We need a guide so that, when people find themselves in a situation like this, they know what to do, who to ring, where to go, who to ask. Currently, it is a lottery.

As it happens, I am from Liverpool and the organisation there was pretty impressive. There was a STARS scheme, which the Marie Curie centre had put on, and they came in to see my mum four times a day while she needed help. Without that, I do not know what we would have done. I live here, my sister lives in London and my mum was in a flat in Liverpool.

The experiences we had throughout were horrendous. As I have said once before here in the House, we experienced the best and the worst. The worst was when a nurse was assessing my mum—who could not speak any more—to see what the next stage of care would be. The nurse was in Maidenhead, or somewhere in Kent, and she was in Liverpool, unable to speak, and they did it on Zoom. It was a relic of Covid, of course, but it was no help to my mum at all. It took weeks before they had to pass on their report, from Margate, to a panel of three people who had never met my mother, to decide what sort of care she would get. It is mad. I repeat: we need a guide for the ignorant. The Government need to provide something like this so that people know where to go.

To conclude that story, the Marie Curie hospice in Liverpool was amazing; the people there were amazing. They cared for my mum for three and half months, which is pretty unusual in a hospice. They could not have been nicer. I remember after she passed, I thanked them for everything they had done and then I said, “But where is the gold watch? She has been in a hospice for three and half months”. They were amazing and I shout out to them.

In conclusion, it was a deep honour to have been a member of the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and I learned so much. Following the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, I ask the Minister to explain the role of data and patient records, and how we can use technology to support people to stay in their homes as long as possible.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege—