| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Dover: That is borne out by a reply that I received from the director of social services. I said to her, "If you
20 Nov 1996 : Column 926
have been underspending this year and for the past two years, you must have built up reserves." She was completely unaware of any reserves, although she is looking into the matter. It shows that the officials are working as best they can, but their political masters are saying, "Do something totally different from what you really want to do."
Another example of the social services department's inefficiency concerns my constituent, Valerie Smith. Unfortunately, about 10 years ago, she lost a child in a road accident, and because of shock and mental disorder, she was in the sad situation of having another child taken away from her. After all those years, the county council suddenly wrote to her to say, "Your child has been adopted." That caused her great mental anguish, because she thought that she had rights of access and that, having proved that she was improving, she could have the child back. She then received that letter and thought that she would not be able to get her child back. However, the council then wrote to say, "Sorry; we made a mistake when we said that your child had been adopted." That is typical of inefficiency in the county council social services.
Cerebral palsy has been mentioned in the debate. Alice Allen, of Chapel lane, Chorley, is six years old and severely disabled from cerebral palsy. The county council social services issued only one orange badge to her family, although her parents work 26 miles apart from each other. Their routine is that one of them will take Alice to the centre in the morning and the other will pick her up at night. Quite rightly, they raised the issue with county council social services, but the response was, "The situation is very difficult. The rules say this and the rules say that." Senior county council officials should use their discretion to be responsive to the wishes of constituents and to issue a second badge in such cases, so that proper care is seen to be meted out to my constituents.
The purpose of the debate is to show that the county council social services department has an uncaring attitude. That is not a sudden development--Labour has controlled the council for the past 14 years--but the situation has been getting worse. It has been a long time since there was Conservative control of the council, and a caring attitude by the council.
Mr. Atkins:
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend. He is providing us with a list of the problems that he and many other Conservative Members are experiencing. Does he agree that the response that we receive from the county council social services department is not always what we would wish it to be, and that a small improvement would make the management of our constituencies and action on behalf of our constituents that much easier?
Mr. Dover:
I agree entirely. Perhaps it is time for the department to re-examine its arrangement of local offices and to ensure that care is available locally. Occasionally it is necessary to reorganise. I agree with my right hon. Friend that it would be better if we had more local offices, and more local officials controlling what is happening and responding to local requirements.
Mr. Peter Thurnham (Bolton, North-East):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Hawkins) on his success in obtaining this Adjournment debate, which concerns not only people in Lancashire, but those across the north-west and in the rest of the United Kingdom, and, of course, most people in Bolton like to think that they are in Lancashire. I was grateful to the Minister for agreeing to see a delegation from the north-west, which included representatives from Bolton, on the first day of his appointment.
Mr. Elletson:
Will the hon. Gentleman tell us what mandate he thinks he has to speak in the debate? He does not represent a seat in the Lancashire county council area, and he betrayed the electors of Bolton--who voted for a Conservative Member of Parliament. Why does not he resign now, fight a by-election, get a proper mandate and then come back to speak?
Mr. Thurnham:
I will not have any lectures from the hon. Gentleman about my interest in the subjects that we are debating today. Those subjects are of concern not only to people in Lancashire, but to those across the north-west and in the rest of the nation.
Mr. Elletson:
The hon. Gentleman is taking up our time.
Mr. Mans:
The hon. Gentleman is not a Lancashire Member of Parliament.
Madam Deputy Speaker:
Order. Each hon. Member is entitled to be heard with reasonable courtesy. I do not expect what almost amounts to barracking.
Mr. Thurnham:
The Minister was good enough to see me on the first day of his appointment. I was grateful to him for doing that, because a delegation had travelled down from the north-west of England in the expectation of seeing his predecessor. I know that it was difficult for him, because he had had the brief for only a few hours, but the delegation was extremely grateful for the opportunity to see him. Various points were made at the meeting, and detailed letters were sent later, under my covering letter of 9 August 1996.
I shall not detain the House for too long with the points raised at the meeting. Representatives of Galebrook nursing home attended, representing the Bolton Association of Residential Care Homes, and raised several issues, including the difficulty of deciding whether people in need of care should be admitted to hospital if they had been admitted incorrectly.
Mr. Mans:
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance about the subject of the
20 Nov 1996 : Column 928
Madam Deputy Speaker:
The hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) said that the point that he was making was relevant to the debate. I must listen a little longer to confirm that.
Mr. Thurnham:
If Conservative Members were better informed, they would know that people from Lancashire go to Bolton association care homes. Therefore, the issues that I am raising are of as much concern to people in Lancashire as they are to people elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Such interventions show only Conservative Members' total ignorance of how the care system works. The concerns expressed by the Bolton Association of Residential Care Homes reflect as much on national issues of care as on the concerns expressed earlier in the debate.
Mr. Frank Hessey, from the Lancashire Association of Care Homes, made some points at the meeting, which he set out in a letter of 30 July 1996. I sent a copy of the letter to the Minister. I was a little disappointed to find that it took more than three months to receive a reply to the points raised at the meeting. I had always thought that the Minister was one of the more effective members of the Government, but the delay has shown the difficulty that he has had in mastering his brief. I hope that there will not be such delays in answering correspondence in the future. I also hope that there will be no excessive delays in issuing a White Paper on personal social services. We have been promised that such a White Paper will be published soon, and the newspapers have trailed it as being due in February.
Among the points raised by people from the north-west at the meeting was the need for rights of choice, and information about choice, for people entering care homes. There have been fears that people are not given the proper information, which they should have. I hope that, in the forthcoming White Paper, the Minister will make it perfectly clear that people who are in the process of entering a care home should be given every piece of information necessary for them to arrive at the best decision. We should start by providing proper choice for people going into residential care rather than their being given misleading information.
One of the aspects that is relevant to the debate is the number of judicial cases that have been taken up. The delegation that saw the Minister included representatives of South Lakeland Care Homes Association, who, at the time, had a judicial review pending. I ask the Minister to address the need to reform the law in that respect. It surely cannot be right, when there is so much pressure on care needs, that money is being spent on lawyers' fees in order to argue about the law.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |