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10.11 am
Mr. Michael J. Martin (Glasgow, Springburn): I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Ms Squire) on bringing this subject before us. Like other hon. Members, I speak from experience. I have a loved one who suffered from Alzheimer's: my late father-in-law Thomas McLay. Unfortunately, he recently died.
He left school at 14 and never had a lazy bone in his body. He worked hard as a miner, and he could have been described as an employer's dream, because, when he had to start work at 6 in the morning, he was there half an hour before, ready to start his shift. He did that whatever time he started. He brought up a family of 13. When the war came, he did his work with the Royal Artillery. I am painting of picture of a someone who asked nothing of any one. He brought up his family along with his wife Margaret. The first time he needed help from the state was when he became an Alzheimer's sufferer.
My mother-in-law, who has also recently died, was determined that Thomas, with whom she had been married for 60 years, would not go into a home, and that she would be the carer in the family. When we talk about carers, the word sometimes rolls off the tongue, but we forget that carers are sometimes aged 70 or 80 years of age, and that they are not always physically fit.
As the Minister knows, I rarely criticise the local authority, but the behaviour of Strathclyde regional council, the biggest local authority in Scotland, if not in the United Kingdom, which is now the City of Glasgow council, in looking after my father-in-law and my mother-in-law, who was a carer, was deplorable. The one thing that we as Members are reluctant to do is fight on behalf of our relatives in case we are accused of putting our nose in, but one day I had absolutely had enough. This man had worked hard all his life. Why should he not get representation from his son-in-law?
I spent half an hour talking to a social worker, and I discovered that she had not been in the family home for 18 months. Things had changed. Sufferers do not one day go along to the doctor, who tells them, "You have Alzheimer's disease." It does not work like that. People start to act irrationally and, often, relatives and the doctor do not know what is going on. It is a gradual process.
Sometimes, as happened with the mother of my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe), sufferers wander away. In my father-in-law's case, it was a form of paranoia. He was worried about people looking into his home, and that someone was following him. He had a thing about his rent being behind, but there was nothing wrong: his rent had never been in arrears.
For 18 months, a social worker had not turned up. I said to her, "Are you going to turn up?" She quoted the wrong telephone number, and I discovered that she was
reading from the file of a family who lived three miles from my mother-in-law and father-in-law. That was the support we received.
I have another criticism. My wife and her sister rightly said that they were going to support their mother. When they turned up in the home and officials from the social work department were present, they deliberately turned their backs on the two daughters and addressed themselves only to the 80-year-old woman who was the carer.
That is a bad example from an organisation that says that it wants to keep families together and to support them, yet any time that the daughters were showing support, it deliberately turned its back. There must be a policy in that social work department, because not only the social worker, but the occupational therapist and many others acted in that way.
I have heard Ministers with responsibility for social security talk about the support we give to carers, but no one came to me and my mother-in-law to say, "This is what you are entitled to." She eventually received various grants and support from the Department of Social Security, but all that was in dribs and drabs. When we wondered whether my father-in-law would be entitled to death gratuities that ex-soldiers were receiving, he was so far into his illness that he could not remember his old Army number, and that delayed his receiving the very thing he was entitled to.
If we are going to say to people, "Be good carers," as a society we must give support. My mother-in-law kept a bed free in the national health service because she wanted her loved one to stay at home, but she was not thinking in economic terms to save the Government money. By doing that, she saved the NHS and the social work department a fortune, and she received no thanks for doing so.
The one organisation to which I give credit was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West: Alzheimer Scotland--Action on Dementia. A girl there called Isabel Marr was prepared to tell my mother-in-law, my wife and her sister, "This is what is happening to your father, to the man you love. Here are the changes that he will endure during his illness."
As we all know, Alzheimer's and dementia patients tend to catch illnesses quickly. Flu can turn into pneumonia, and they are immediately admitted to hospital. There is a habit in our hospitals, which we all have a great regard for: they give a patient with dementia the strongest tranquilisers that they have in the ward. That is not only dangerous, but insulting to patients. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West rightly stated, although the patient can be suffering in terms of being unable to communicate in a certain way and it is hard to get a conversation going, in many ways they can still think clearly.
Until his last day, my father-in-law could draw and paint beautiful pictures. We have them hanging framed in our home. Certain parts of his mind were still very active, and he needed stimulation, as we all do. However, in the ward for the elderly in the local hospital, there was not even one picture hanging on the walls. I argued about that with the hospital administrator. He asked why the hospital should put pictures on the wall. I said, "Because you've got pictures on your wall at home, so why shouldn't people living in the hospital, as their home, for a week or two have the same amenities?"
I am trying to get across to the Minister and anyone working in social services who might be listening the fact that carers must get 101 per cent. support. If we do not give them that, we will simply be sweeping the problem of dementia and Alzheimer's disease under the carpet. We will be letting other people deal with the problem behind their own doors.
Mr. Barry Jones (Alyn and Deeside):
It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin). The human need in the case he instanced spoke volumes.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Ms Squire) for initiating this debate. I am sure that thousands of people will be grateful to her for doing so. It is telling that this is the first major House of Commons debate on dementia for 10 years. It shows that, as politicians and policy makers, we have failed to meet the challenge that dementia presents.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Springburn, I acknowledge the carers in my constituency who have been so loyal to their parents, partners and friends. Every Member of Parliament who does his work conscientiously knows a small army of carers in his constituency. We know them to be very faithful and disciplined; their loyalty is outstanding. Without a shadow of doubt, they save the British state billions of pounds which otherwise would have to be expended in more formal caring environments.
To its great credit, The Times last week devoted a whole page to Alzheimer's disease and carers. I draw to the attention of the House what Richard Eyre, the director of the National Theatre, said in his very moving remarks:
The disease is really a Cinderella disease, even though it is a common one, and even though it can strike as early as 30 years of age. I call it a Cinderella disease because only £10 per sufferer is spent on research, while £475 per cancer victim is spent on research. In that context, all credit must go to Alzheimer Scotland--Action for Dementia and the Alzheimer's Disease Society. I know the latter body reasonably well. It has a dedicated and lively staff. It has encouraged the discerning public to accept that the problem will not go away. The society is successful and respected, and it gets fine leadership from Mr. Harry Cayton and the devoted group around him.
I regret that, in recent years, the number of continuing care beds in the national health service has been cut by 40 per cent. I also regret that many more highly dependent
people with dementia are paying for places in nursing or residential homes, whereas 10 years ago they would have been cared for by the NHS free at the point of delivery. I further regret that whether or not people get such care depends on where they live.
I want the Government to end what is in effect a lottery by taking up the Health Select Committee's proposals--first, for national eligibility criteria; and secondly, for a long-term care charter. Unless we follow the recommendations of the Select Committee, the disparities will be such that we will become a nation made up of district health services, rather than a truly national health service. That is the direction in which we are going, and it concerns me greatly.
In Wales, we believe that we invented the national health service. We certainly gave the great Aneurin Bevan to this House--and he, without a shadow of doubt, fashioned what was, and, indeed, may still be, the envy of the developed world by creating the great NHS. The problems faced by sufferers of Alzheimer's disease show that all is not well in our national health service.
The Government have issued a consultation paper entitled "A New Partnership for Care in Old Age". Some people will benefit from what is proposed, but some will not. I am concerned about the heavy role that the Government intend to hand to the insurance industry. The blunt truth is that long-term care insurance is not an affordable option for those who cannot make regular payments into an insurance policy. Many of the less well-off people live in Wales, my country. They have ill health, they have been in and out of work, and they sometimes have caring responsibilities.
"The personality starts to disappear and with it the humanity and the soul, leaving as if in mockery only the body to breathe and be fed."
He summed up the scene devastatingly well.
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