Health and Care Bill

Debate between Peter Aldous and Daisy Cooper

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 25th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

I will speak to the workforce amendment and the amendment on the social care cap.

The Lords have compromised on the workforce amendment—they have now asked for projections every three years instead of every two, and they no longer require independent verification of the projections—so it is deeply disappointing that the Government have not moved to meet them halfway, especially when outside the Government there is so much cross-party consensus that the amendment is badly needed. I know from my constituency of St Albans, as I am sure many Members know from theirs, that our NHS and care staff are burnt out. They are understaffed and overworked. Those people, who continue to turn up every single day, need to know that the cavalry is coming, and without this workforce amendment, they simply will not.

There have been worrying reports that NHS trusts have been silenced when they have tried to talk about the numbers of staff that they need to recruit, so will the Minister address this question in his response: if the Government will not produce workforce planning numbers, will they at least commit to not interfere with or silence any part of the NHS or care sector that decides that it wants to produce its own workforce projections? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s assurances on that point.

When it comes to the social care cap, Ministers have stated time and again that their changes would save the Treasury £900 million a year by 2027-28, but that saving comes at the expense of people with fewer assets and savings, including those who will have been paying five years of increased national insurance contributions, which were put in place partly to fund these care reforms. The Government continue to say that that improves on the current situation, but they conveniently ignore that it is much worse than their original proposal. The social care cap provision does nothing to generate more care; it does nothing to give protections to unpaid carers, who are often on lower incomes but save the Government millions of pounds; and it does nothing to help the social care workforce. I know from my constituency that hospitality, the NHS and social care are all fighting for the same people, and nothing in the Bill will help to improve that situation.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I am grateful to have a few minutes to say a few words on the cap on care costs and on workforce planning.

With regard to the care cap, it is important to congratulate the Government on tackling a problem—or attempting to defuse a ticking time bomb—that all their predecessors shied away from. However, there is concern that the proposals are a rushed tag-on to a Bill that was designed for a different purpose: the integration of health and social care and the setting up of integrated care systems. I accept that there is a clear correlation, but the legislation that addresses the problem of people being forced to sell their homes to pay for their care should have been considered and scrutinised separately and carefully, with the objective of putting in place a system that has political consensus and will stand the test of time. That is what the Dilnot proposals and the Care Act 2014 achieved, and they should be the foundation stone on which we build this new system.

My concerns are twofold. First, clause 140 is extremely unfair to those with limited assets and modest incomes. The changes may save the Government hundreds of millions of pounds, but they do so at the expense of those on low incomes and those who live in parts of the country where house values are lower, such as Lowestoft in my constituency. Secondly, there is a worry that working-age adults with disabilities will be unfairly penalised, hence the introduction by the other place of a provision to address it. I acknowledge the Government’s worries about the cost implication of that additional provision, but that iniquity needs to be addressed.

On workforce planning, there is a staffing crisis both in the NHS, where there are 110,000 full-time equivalent vacancies, and in social care, where there are another 100,000 vacancies, high staff turnover and very limited respite for unpaid and family carers. Those deficiencies cascade through the health and care system, creating bed-blocking in hospitals and impeding the efforts made to reduce waiting lists. There is an urgent need for strategic planning to address this crisis. There is concern that framework 15 is not working because of inadequacies in the collection of data, lack of assessment of workforce numbers, and unresponsiveness to societal shifts.

Since we last considered the issue last month, the other place has sought to address the Government’s concerns and, as we have heard, has made reasonable concessions. There is a crisis that must be addressed, and I hope that at this very late stage the Government will accept this reasonable amendment, so that we can get on with this much-needed work.

Building Safety Bill

Debate between Peter Aldous and Daisy Cooper

Report stage
Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

New clause 2 and amendment 1, which stand in my name and are kindly supported by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), add “the protection of property” to the list of purposes for which building regulations may be made under the Building Act 1984, and require the Building Safety Regulator to carry out its work

“with a view to furthering the protection of property”.

In many respects, in terms of drafting, these are tweaks to the Bill, but they could have far-reaching and positive consequences. Modern methods of construction and the increasing compartmental sizes of industrial and commercial buildings are leading to more challenging and larger fires, which put lives at risk and also cause enormous social, economic and environmental consequential damage. That is exactly what happened at Wessex Foods in Lowestoft 11 years ago, in July 2011. If adequate property protection measures—in the form of sprinklers, in that instance—had been in place, a huge amount of disruption would have been avoided, and the firefighters would have been back at their station in four minutes.

If the consideration of “property protection” were added to the Building Act and the building regulations, we would secure a significant double dividend: greater safety for people, including firefighters, and more sustainable buildings. It is far better to be preventing fires than to be putting them out. I should therefore be grateful if the Minister gave serious consideration to accepting new clause 2 and amendment 1, so that the Building Act can be amended to provide for the protection of property. These proposals have the support of professionals across the fire sector: the National Fire Chiefs Council, the Fire Sector Federation, the Fire Brigades Union, the Fire Protection Association and the Institution of Fire Engineers.

The new clause and amendment would provide an appropriate framework for the future fire safety of building design, and we would therefore know that homes, schools, care homes, student accommodation and all industrial and commercial buildings had adequate property protection and fire prevention measures built in at the start, so that we were not putting people—including firefighters—and property at risk. As I have said, I should be grateful if the Minister considered these proposals.

[Daisy Cooper]

I will speak very briefly about amendment 75 and new clauses 24 and 25, all of which stand in my name and are supported by the Local Government Association.

Amendment 75 is pretty straightforward. At present, the Bill lacks clarity in relation to social housing providers. This amendment to clause 57 would make registered social landlords exempt from the additional financial burden of the building safety levy. I think it unacceptable that council and housing association tenants have to subsidise the failures of private developers under this scheme.

The purpose of the two new clauses, taken together, is to introduce a more stringent building safety framework that would apply to multiple dwellings under 18 metres in height as well as those above. We have already heard from hon. Members about how crude the 18-metre cut-off is and how it has no basis. Indeed, many of us remember seeing a leaked video of an adviser to the Government saying that that figure had been plucked out of the air.

These two new clauses, taken together, would prevent having a two-tier building safety regime. I ask the Minister to respond to the amendment and the new clauses to see whether the Government might be willing to adopt them all during the passage of the Bill.