Queen’s Speech

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome both maiden speakers today and I wish the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth a long, happy and busy retirement away from the House.

It looks like another year lost for the reform of social care, and I make no apology for concentrating on that issue. It is another year when people who are self-funding their care pay well over the odds for care —by which, I mean 40%—compared with those funded by local authorities in the same care home with the same services. This means that the family home is likely to be sold earlier than if there was a fairer system. It is surprising that more is not made of this, but I think it remains unchallenged due to the circumstances involved in securing care in the first place.

The situation completely undermines the 2019 Tory manifesto claim that

“one condition we do make is that nobody needing care should be forced to sell their home to pay for it”.

Furthermore, there has been no action on that manifesto commitment to

“build a cross-party consensus to bring forward an answer that solves the problem”.

No work has been done; there has been no reaching out; no one wants to be accused of the death tax allegation which snuffed out earlier attempts. The Government claim that they are talking; the Opposition claim that they are not. We are not being told what is going on in any detail by either the Opposition or the Government. In short, we are not being told the truth.

The Lords Economic Affairs Committee report, Social Care Funding: Time to End a National Scandal, set it all out in mid-2019. The opening words of the debate on that report, on 28 January this year, from the chair, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said it all— I shall quote just four sentences:

“We published our report in July 2019, and yet, 18 months later, we still await the Government’s response … ‘With each delay the level of unmet need in the system increases, the pressure on unpaid carers grows stronger, the supply of care providers diminishes and the strain on the care workforce continues.’ Just 20 days after our report was published, the Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street and said ‘we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve.’ Now, more than ever, urgent government action is required”.—[Official Report, 28/1/21; cols. GC 235-36.]


In fact, the Prime Minister was more specific than his now famous quote indicates, because he actually said:

“My job is to protect you or your parents or grandparents from the fear of having to sell your home to pay for the costs of care.”


That was a very carefully crafted first speech as Prime Minister, not a one-off, off the cuff ramble. Was he telling the truth?

The Chancellor claims that lack of consensus over funding is a significant barrier to reform—an excuse that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, translates as,

“I don’t want to spend the money”.—[Official Report, 28/1/21; col. GC 237.]


As with healthcare, we need to share the risk, because no one can be sure or certain whether they will ever need social care. So it is a requirement to help those who can help themselves as well as those who cannot. And, of course, it needs a new stream of funding, such as national insurance payable on all incomes and for all ages—because, like many people, I had many years after the age of 65 still working on PAYE and not paying national insurance—or a small step up in taxes, say 1%, when you reach the age of 40. Without a specific financial cap on self-funding, it is impossible to remove the fear the Prime Minister spoke of.

Social care may have featured in the Queen’s Speech, but not in a positive way: the Peter Brookes cartoon in today’s Times says it all. The reality is that care homes are going to go bust. Some care homes will move to being available only for self-funders. Caring is therefore not a career option. There is no structure and it will always be on low pay. The failure to act is, indeed, in the words of the report of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, “a national scandal”.