Care Workers: Professional Register

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to introduce a professional register for care workers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

We will invest at least £500 million in the social care workforce over the next three years. The major investment includes the introduction of a digital care workforce hub. This hub will help identify people working in social care and provide them with access to resources to help them in their careers. It will also include a skills passport to provide staff with a permanent record of their training and development over their career.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for that reply. In his letter to us today on NHS resilience, the Secretary of State says:

“Social care is vital for our success in managing Covid-19, working as part of a single system with the NHS.”


We all agree that we need to integrate the NHS and social care and provide a high-quality, seamless service to users, but as long as those in the social care profession are seen as the undervalued poor relations of those in the health sector, such integration is going to be very difficult. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have already introduced a registration scheme, offering professional skills and better working conditions for those in social care and making it a more attractive career profession. When will England do the same?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

As my noble friend rightly points out, the devolved Administrations have registers in place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and they have taken a phased approach over the years to registers of staff working in a variety of roles across social care, because of the complexity of the sector. This is why our first priority is to embed a knowledge and skills framework to clearly understand the current layout of the workforce and the skills required in their roles and to look at potential pathways before we consider mandatory regulation.