Westminster Hall
Thursday 26 February 2009
[Sir John Butterfill in the Chair]
Carers
[Relevant documents: Fourth Report from the Work and Pensions Committee, Session 2007-08, on Valuing and Supporting Carers, HC 485, and the Government’s response, HC 105, Session 2008-09.]
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—(Jonathan Shaw.)
2.30pm
Mr. Terry Rooney (Bradford, North) (Lab): This is the first time that I have had the pleasure of being in this forum when you have been in the Chair, Sir John. I have seen you in the Chair in other forums, and it is a pleasure to serve under you today. This is also the first opportunity that I have had officially to congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on his new position as the Minister with responsibility for disabled people, and to welcome him to that. I know about, and endorse, his commitment to the subject, and I shall say more about that later.
I thank all those organisations and individuals who were summoned to provide evidence to the inquiry. Select Committees often forget the enormous burden that we place on people, particularly the voluntary sector, when requiring them to put together evidence to submit to us, and it is right to put that on the record. I particularly thank the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. We were fortunate to visit its carers’ centre in Harrogate, which was an incredibly moving experience, especially our session with carers, one of whom was 17. We must remember that the number of child carers in this country is significant, and that involves considerable issues.
I broadly thank the Government for their response to our report, but my hon. Friend will not be surprised that I take issue with some of it. I understand that today the National Audit Office published a report on carers, but I have not been able to obtain a copy—I do not know whether he is hiding them. Therefore, I am not sure what it says, but I am sure that it is constructive.
I want to speak about three things: carer’s allowance, information and advice, and employment and training for carers. My colleagues will also want to contribute to the debate. There are 4.5 million carers in this country, and it is estimated that they save the economy about £87 billion, so they are significant. As life expectancy increases, that number will increase significantly. It is hoped that medical advances, such as stem cell research, will ultimately provide cures for diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, but as people live into their 80s and 90s, other issues will come to the fore—for example, osteoporosis. Our unsung army of carers will increase. That and social care are the two biggest issues facing the Government for years to come.
In round terms, just under 500,000 people receive carer’s allowance, and about 400,000 others are entitled to it but do not receive it, principally because of overlapping benefit rules. We all understand that, and the Select
Committee did not recommend a change to those rules, but what must change is the three-page letter that goes to pensioners telling them that they are entitled to the allowance.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Jonathan Shaw): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that, and anticipated that he would. We have drafted a new letter and will ensure that all Select Committee members receive it before it is piloted. I shall be grateful for their comments, including on whether they think it is fit for purpose. I have read the evidence and the current letter is not fit for purpose because it does not do its job. I shall value the Committee’s feedback.
Mr. Rooney: Never let it be said that the power of Select Committees cannot move mountains, even if it is only a change in the drafting of a letter. I welcome my hon. Friend’s promise, because the letter has caused great and unnecessary consternation.
The Government said in their response that carer’s allowance is not income replacement or a wage for caring. They went on to say that they are not willing at the moment to consider carer’s allowance outside the general review of benefits. If it is not a benefit and not a wage, why not review it separately? The promise of a review in 2011, perhaps later, with final implementation around 2018, and linking it to the chimera of a single working age benefit, which we are a million miles from getting, is extremely disappointing, to put it mildly.
Mrs. Joan Humble (Blackpool, North and Fleetwood) (Lab): My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. The Government have said that they do not want piecemeal reform, but aspects of the system within which the carer’s allowance works could be altered with no impact on the debate about a future single working age benefit. For example, those on the minimum wage receive an increase in that minimum wage in the autumn, and carer’s allowance is uprated in April-May, so workers who receive carer’s allowance sometimes find that they must stop work or reduce their hours or they will lose their entitlement to the allowance. That could be examined separately.
Mr. Rooney: My hon. Friend makes an extremely intelligent point. There needs to be some alignment of the change in carer’s allowance with the change in the minimum wage, because 50p or 60p can have an unbelievably extraordinary impact on people. I think we all agree, whatever our other positions, that carers live their lives under pressure and can do without needless administrative hurdles.
Some of the announcements in December were piecemeal reforms. The Government made the bold announcement that income support will be abolished—I pay tribute to the Minister’s absolute commitment that carers will not be moved on to jobseeker’s allowance, and I know the effort that he put into that—but that was immediately qualified with the statement that income support will not be abolished while claimants are receiving it. That could take 25 years.
The partial move of some lone parents on to jobseeker’s allowance and parking them in the progression to work group is sensible, but it is a piecemeal reform. Carers are
a clearly identifiable group, and the Government are saying that they will not be in the benefits system because carer’s allowance is not recognised as a benefit or a wage. Therefore, why can that group not be dealt with specifically? The problem has been around since 1948 and the establishment of the welfare state, but the original invalid care allowance was introduced only 15 or 20 years ago. Progress has been far too slow for the army of people who deserve better and to have attention focused on them.
The concept of a single working age benefit is linked to simplification, for which people have been crying out for 30 or 40 years. That is an ideal, but as soon as implementation is considered, all sorts of obstacles and hurdles arise. I do not see there being a single working age benefit in my lifetime, and I hope to live to be much older than I am now. We need to consider that.
Last June, the Government published their 10-year vision for carers, “Carers at the heart of 21st-century families and communities”, which states that
“carers will be supported so that they are not forced into financial hardship by their caring role”.
That is an extremely bold commitment. If we implement it tomorrow, we will make 4.5 million people very happy. As yet, however, there is no measure of how, when, where or whether that will be done.
Another important issue raised in our report involves two particular groups of people. One is carers who care for more than one severely disabled person and who still receive only one carer’s allowance. The second is people who are caring for two or more individuals who do not qualify for middle or higher rate disability living allowance care, although that is an equivalent care burden to having one person to care for who is getting the middle or higher rate. The carer’s allowance system does not recognise a situation in which two or more disabled people do not qualify for that rate.
We have a moral duty—an obligation—to the 4.5 million carers to set out a timetable for reform of carer’s allowance and for milestones along the way against which whichever Government we have can be measured. This group of people has been far too patient for far too long.
Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire) (Con): I am listening carefully to the Chairman of the Select Committee’s excellent speech. Does he agree that in some ways we are going backwards? Our report made the point that if we uprate the benefit in October and the threshold for earnings in the spring, we are pushing people off benefit for six months in a very disruptive way, but the Government’s response seems to have been, “Oh well, we’ll just freeze the threshold.” This year, the threshold has been frozen at £95 and there has been no increase at all. Is that helpful?
Mr. Rooney: The straight answer is no, it is not. I want to come on to that point, but I also want to talk about employment and training. If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will come back to it.
On information and advice, one of the startling things that came out in our inquiry was the relative paucity of advice for carers. Most carers take a long time—sometimes years—to recognise themselves as carers. Sadly, just a
couple of weeks before Christmas, my wife broke her leg, and for about six weeks I was a carer. I was not a very good one and I was not a full-time one—I am glad she is not here—but it did get me thinking about all the different situations that I have had in my own life when I have been a carer. People think that that is their duty, and let us not forget that it is largely women who do this work. People take on the role without any knowledge, advice or information coming to them about what is available for carers, however meagre that might be.
The Committee visited the carers’ centre in Harrogate run by the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. It has a number of centres around the country; I forget exactly how many. It may not be the only way to do it, but that centre was an outstanding example of a one-stop shop where people could obtain all the information that they could possibly need on all aspects of caring and what was available. How many carers have no idea about their entitlement to respite care? Such care is a lifeline for carers. It enables them to take a weekend off without feeling guilty. Lots of money is being put into respite care and lots of social services departments have got pots of money, as have some primary care trusts, but it is not advertised and carers are left unaware of it. We need to do much better on the provision of information and advice. We recommended a network of centres, perhaps on the model employed by the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, although we are not too fussy; if a different model works, let us use that.
“Putting People First”, which I think is a Department for Communities and Local Government publication, committed local and national Government to making significant progress by 2011 to ensure that all areas have both carer support and a
“universal information, advice and advocacy service for people needing services...irrespective of their eligibility for public funding.”
That is fine in so far as it goes, but there is no penalty on local government and local health services if they do not provide it. I know that there is a great argument about centralisation, devolution and whether things are ring-fenced or not, but I do not know any arm of local or central Government that disagrees that those services need to be provided, so why not have a mechanism to ensure that that is happening?
A separate issue is that social care and health are devolved in Scotland, but there is a UK benefits system. There is a tension in that respect which no one seems to have resolved. There are issues about devolved education as well, in relation to young carers. The system in Scotland is different from that in England, but a universal benefits system is laid on top of that. I know that, generally, there are cordial relations between central Government and the devolved Administrations, but at the end of the day the devolved Administrations can say, “Go away. We’re not doing it.” There is universal carer’s allowance, with all the conditions attached to it, but in different parts of the UK the support networks behind it have different rules and regulations. That was not properly addressed in the Government response to our report. I hope that we will hear more about it today.
My final point concerns employment and training issues for carers. On average, carers act as carers for eight years. Most carers are in the 35 to 55 age group—what one might call the prime earning years. Either they come out of the job market entirely or they work part time but have to forgo promotion and advancement and
turn down training opportunities. That is a major impediment to their earning power at the time, but it also translates to poverty in retirement, because at the peak earning time when normally people would start putting extra money into pensions and so on, their employment ability is reduced and their capacity for income is reduced
Let us not forget that 250,000 carers are retired. We heard one case of a widow of 71 who was a carer for her mother, who was 90-odd, and 51-year-old twin sons, who were severely disabled. She receives the carer’s credit attached to her pension credit—£27 a week. Had she been a bit younger, she would have received only the single £50 a week carer’s allowance. It will be increasingly common for people in retirement to be caring for adult children as well as parents. However, we do not seem to have recognised that, in the circumstances that I have described, carers’ incomes are significantly reduced and their employment opportunities are reduced. Some of the rules and regulations that relate to education and training were designed for a different era and a different cohort of claimants, and they positively work against carers.
Professor Paul Gregg got it absolutely right in his review, which he delivered just before Christmas. He came up with the concept of a progression to work group. That refers to people who at some future point will want to work but currently are not required to look for work or be subject to the normal JSA conditions. A channel of communication is needed so that we can say to carers, “You can opt in if you want to. These are the options and opportunities that are available, but it is not mandatory.” We need a line of communication if we are to bridge that gap. The gap is an average of eight years, with people not being in employment and missing training and other opportunities as a result. We need to find other ways of telling them about what is available.
We also need to look seriously at the restrictions of the benefit system on those in training. I am not talking about the universal abolition of the 16-hour rule or the 21-hour rule. It is a clearly identified group for which we can write a special prescription. We do it often enough, but we need to use a bit more imagination. As I said, the exclusion of those on income support from claiming jobseeker’s allowance is a distinct group.
The carer’s time has come. It is not good enough to keep the debate going. Carers have been consulted to death. We do not need any more consultation. The message is clear; the prescription is clear. The only reason why there has not been more progress is that it is a silent group. There is no trade union marching for the carers. There is no army of fancy lawyers—I apologise to hon. Members for mentioning this—seeking fee income from representing them. Carers sit and suffer in silence. Regrettably, groups that sit and suffer in silence tend to be ignored by the Government.
I think back a couple of years and 100,000 people losing their pensions when their companies went into administration. It took a while, but in the end the Government came up with a package worth £8 billion. That was to satisfy 100,000 people. Last year, the ombudsman’s report into Equitable Life was finally published. The Government responded, and at some point a package will be put together to compensate those affected. Why? It was because, over the years, they made a lot of noise.
Let every Member of the House—all 651 of us—act as champions and be the voice for the carers. It has gone on for long enough. It is time that they were rewarded and recognised for their immense contribution. Last August, we were all thrilled by the British success at the Olympics. We had 19 gold medallists. They were praised as heroes and were recognised in the New Year’s honours list. In the carers, we have 4.5 million heroes. They need to be recognised today.
2.52 pm
John Howell (Henley) (Con): May I welcome you to the Chair, Sir John, and express my pleasure in serving under you.
It is a privilege to follow the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney). May I say, from the Opposition Benches, what a pleasure it has been for us to serve under his chairmanship as members of the Committee?
This was the first inquiry with which I have become involved since joining the House. I did not become a Member until near the tail end of the Committee’s work. That was not entirely my fault, as the by-election did not take place until the end of the evidence-taking session. None the less, I am pleased to have been involved, as it is a subject of great importance.
The report outlines very well the problems faced by carers. I draw the attention of hon. Members to paragraph 35, which gives a good summary of the human cost of caring. Exactly what carers have to go through was best brought out in one of the first e-mails that I received on the subject, which came from a carer in my constituency. The carer’s story was also told in the pages of my local paper, the HenleyStandard. It is the story of a garden designer who, following the death of his mother-in-law, has had to care for his wife, who suffers from bipolar disorder. He has had to do so for some four years.
My constituent spoke of the effect on himself and his own health, and how it had led to depression and problems with his blood pressure. He said that he could no longer work as a garden designer, as his wife needed constant care. He said,
“I used to try to work and look after her at the same time but it was impossible. Because of her illness, her mood swings are very unpredictable.”
He also said that it was impossible to make ends meet, and spoke of the lack of respite care. Understandably, he took only small comfort from knowing that his situation was common to many carers, and that some were worse off than him.
In the face of such a story, it was right for the Committee to have made carers the centre of its inquiry and of this report. If I had become a member of the Committee earlier, I would have wanted to make one slight addition to the report. It does not quite bring out the particular impact on carers who live in rural constituencies such as mine. In these locations the isolation is greater, the transport links are poorer, and caring usually involves additional costs.
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