Social Care

Debate between Teresa Pearce and Paul Farrelly

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

I welcome the contributions made by Members on both sides of the House. They have highlighted the scale of the crisis we face in adult social care. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) set out passionately the long-standing need for integration. We had informative and knowledgeable contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Halton (Derek Twigg), for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), for Halifax (Holly Lynch), for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) and for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn). On the Government side, we also heard thoughtful contributions from the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) and the hon. Members for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) and for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman).

It seems we all agree that there is a crisis. I believe that 2017 will be a make-or-break year for our social care system. That system is currently teetering on the edge of a precipice. More and more, we find that local authorities can no longer afford to fulfil their statutory obligations regarding the social care of elderly and disabled people. Social care providers are handing contracts back to councils because they are no longer financially viable. Beds in hospitals are occupied for weeks—sometimes even months—by people who are well enough to leave but cannot because there is no social care available for them once they do.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

In a matter of months, within the still secret Staffordshire STP, the projected 2021 deficit for social care has jumped from just over £100 million to £256 million. With the NHS deficit, that makes more than half a billion pounds now, excluding anything from Stoke-on-Trent. Without further funding and investment, that gap is simply unbridgeable, so it is hardly surprising that in the past few days both the STP chair and its programme director have tendered their resignations.

[Teresa Pearce]

I am glad my hon. Friend has had the chance to raise that very important point.

The crisis is affecting elderly people across the country, as we have heard eloquently expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). More than a million elderly people in this country who need social care are getting no support. Half of older people who have difficulty bathing or getting dressed receive no support. One third of all older people who have difficulty going to the toilet on their own are receiving no support. An estimated 1.1 million are chronically lonely. Is it any wonder that almost 4 million older people in this country now say that television is their only source of company? That is happening on our watch, and we should all be both saddened and shamed by it.

The rise in demand for social care does not come as a surprise to any of us, however. We live in a society with an ageing population. We must concentrate on building a sustainable social care system to meet that rising demand. Members across the House know from their own constituencies, as I do from mine, that the spending cuts have already hit vulnerable people. One in 10 care homes has closed since 2010, and 400,000 fewer people accessed care in the last Parliament because of funding reductions. According to Learning Disability Voices, a shocking three quarters of all people who apply for social care support from their local council are now turned away.

For those who can access care, the bar for what can be described as care gets lower and lower. Staffing levels have been so severely reduced that workers have barely any time to actually look after people. As we have heard, some visits have been cut from 30 to 15 minutes. That is 15 minutes to make someone dinner, to bathe them, to give them medication, to change their sheets and to give them any other help they might need. It is barely time to take your coat off and say hello. In fact, 15 minutes is about the time we take in this place to divide. I hope Members will bear that in mind when they pass through the Lobby shortly.

The King’s Fund has described the care system as a

“threadbare local authority safety net.”

Although the majority of those receiving care are elderly people, roughly a third are younger people who have a physical disability, learning disability or mental health problem. These people are far less likely to have income to support them and far less likely to have children who can care for them as they get older. In fact, they are more likely to have elderly relatives who live in dread of what will happen when they are gone.

When disabled people are looked after in the community, with a local authority-provided care package, their needs are reduced by up to 50%. We often hear about needing to reduce the dependency culture, and the provision of social care, including day centres, does just that: it allows people with disabilities to live an independent and healthy life. Rather than allowing this sector to crumble, we should be looking at how to invest in and expand it. It has been said here today that the mark of a civilised society is how we treat the disabled, the elderly and the vulnerable. We are failing that test miserably.

Let us be clear about one thing: this crisis is not the fault of those working in the social care sector. In fact, they are among the most undervalued and underpaid workers in the country. Neither is this crisis the fault of local government. Nobody goes into local government and public service to cut care and support for the vulnerable. Local authorities are trying to plug the gap. In 2014 alone, councils diverted £900 million from other budgets to maintain the current level of social care, despite making efficiency savings. Local councils are on the frontline of government, providing the integral services that our communities rely on. It is simply impossible for them to plug the momentous funding gap in adult social care that they face. Let us make no mistake about the root of this crisis: it is the stark result of the austerity policies pursued by the previous Chancellor. It is his six years of brutal and devastating cuts to local government that have brought us here.

If we let our elderly and disabled people languish in loneliness and frustration in unhygienic and inadequate conditions, it will be a stain on our collective conscience. What kind of country would we be? When the new Prime Minister took up her position, she stood on the steps of No. 10 and said she wanted

“a country that works for everyone.”

Today, the Government have an opportunity to prove that the Prime Minister meant what she said. I would like the Minister to consider three questions when he responds to the debate. Will he confirm that the better care funding is not additional money, but has in fact been taken from the existing NHS budget? What assessment has he made of the effect of the living wage on care contracts, and does he have an estimate of how many contracts will be exited in the next 12 months by providers? Will he let me know what steps and checks he is making to ensure that local authorities are not commissioning 15-minute care visits, as recommended in their own guidelines? If the Minister cannot answer those questions today, I hope he will write to me in the coming weeks.

We are all hopeful that the autumn statement will bring forward urgent funding to stem an impending crisis in social care, but there must also be a strategy to put social care on a sustainable, long-term footing so that people can grow old in this country without fear, and disabled people can live with dignity and safety. The Government must recognise that by stripping local government of its funding to the point that even statutory requirements are difficult to meet, we will not benefit the economy or productivity of this country, or the wellbeing of our society. As the sixth-richest economy in the world, this country can, and must, provide this vital assistance to the most vulnerable people in society.