Children’s Care Homes: Private Equity
Debate between Lord Whitty and Baroness Barran(9 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
The first thing—whether the noble Baroness agrees or not—is that it provides an enormous amount of capacity, and in her zeal to address the profitability of the sector we need to consider also the stability of those placements for children.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, I think it was only two Prime Ministers ago who promised before the last general election that they would fix social care. The problems that we have talked about today apply to the whole of the social care sector. In effect, those who pay for care—whether for elderly parents or local authorities for children and others, who are very vulnerable people—are subsidising private equity companies’ profits. When are the Government going to get round to fixing it and have a whole new policy for social care that improves the conditions for everybody?
Baroness Barran (Con)
We have announced our new social care strategy. The noble Lord will be aware of the independent review of children’s social care, which we have acted on. We are now starting to implement the initial pathfinder sites to test our new family-led approach to social care. As he said, these are vulnerable children and families, so we need to do this judiciously.
Amazon
Debate between Lord Whitty and Baroness Barran(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government and the Treasury absolutely recognise the importance of our high streets. That is why the Treasury announced a fundamental review of the business rates system earlier this year.
Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]
My Lords, has the Minister read the report by the TUC and the GMB this morning on Amazon’s dire employment practices? In this Covid period, Amazon has received a lot of government and public sector contracts. Why are the Government not using their leverage over those contracts to ensure that Amazon improves its employment conditions?
Baroness Barran (Con)
We are working across the piece to protect jobs in all parts of the economy and to clamp down on any abuses that we are aware of.
Music Industry
Debate between Lord Whitty and Baroness Barran(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government absolutely recognise some of the issues that the noble Baroness raises. We do not have the data specifically for music, but across the cultural sector, about 75,000 people have already benefited from the Self-employment Income Support Scheme. We have aimed to structure the cultural recovery fund in a way that maximises employment opportunities for those working in this sector, but obviously we are keeping it under review and are in close conversation with sector bodies.
Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]
In normal times, many musicians and music enterprises make part of their money from live appearances and touring, particularly across Europe. I have yet to have a reply to my question to the noble Lord, Lord True, last week as to what post-Brexit provisions for free movement of musicians and free passage of their equipment, and that of support teams, the Government are looking for in this week's negotiations. I ask the Minister here today: what are the expectations of her department in that regard?
Baroness Barran (Con)
Obviously, my department is working very closely with those involved in the negotiations, and we aim to negotiate reciprocal arrangements which will facilitate businesses, including musicians and groups of musicians, to deliver their services within the EU.