Social Care

Question

15:00:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve social care provision over the next two years.

My Lords, this year we have boosted funding for social care authorities by up to £3.7 billion and provided £86 million for home adaptations for older and disabled people. Further improvements include the largest ever uplift to the carer’s allowance earnings limit, legislation on the first fair pay agreement for care workers and new standards for care technologies. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is chairing an independent commission to make recommendations for a national care service, with the first phase reporting next year.

I thank my noble friend for that reply and welcome the initiatives that she has outlined. I want to raise further the extraordinary work of unpaid workers in the care system. The Government have confirmed to me that 61% of unpaid carers in receipt of carer’s allowance have no other additional income from paid employment. This is not surprising, since eligibility for the allowance requires 35 hours of caring every week, but the amount received for this work is only £83.30 a week or less than £2.40 an hour. Will the Minister urgently review this woeful level of recompense, well ahead of the review by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, in 2028? This is for millions of unpaid carers, without whom the social care system may well collapse.

I thank my noble friend for his question and take this opportunity to pay tribute to all those unpaid carers who make such an important contribution to the lives of the most vulnerable in our society. This Government are committed to ensuring that families have the support they need, and we know that many people want to play a role caring for their family and friends. Quite frankly, it is exceptionally difficult at times. We want to ensure that they are better able to look after their own health and well-being, which will enable them to care for others. To support our unpaid carers, in April 2025 the Government increased the carer’s allowance weekly earnings limit from £150 to £196. This is the largest ever increase. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, through her commission, will be looking at this situation very closely as we move forward.

My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of an adult social care business. It is time—and I hope the review looks at this—to rename carers something other than “carers”, because it distorts the training and level of professionalism that carers provide every day. If we try to rephrase the name “carers”, they may see that there is a career progress model in place for them.

I welcome the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, that she will look to reach out to all the different organisations, including the voluntary sector and carers themselves. She will hear from across the sector, and I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, will make her voice heard as we take this work forward.

My Lords, the recent report of the Health and Social Care Committee found that too much emphasis is being put on the cost of reforming social care and not enough thought being given to the human and financial cost of inaction. It also argued that the Government need to measure the true cost of inaction so that they can present a robust financial case, not least to the Treasury, and one that takes account of the loss of tax receipts as people have to give up work and withdraw from the labour market. Do the Government agree with that analysis?

It will come as no surprise to the noble Baroness that we are looking at the recommendations of the Health and Social Care Select Committee report and will come forward with our responses. It is of course vital to look at the impact of the model that we have now on society, on the people involved and on the economy. The various debates we have had in this House in the time I have been here have picked that up and recognised the valuable contribution that carers make to the economy. We have to start taking the holistic view moving forward. That is why we have the commission: to look at all the different aspects, improve the situation and make progress.

Does the Minister agree that the Government will not achieve their ambitions for the National Health Service without also having a well-developed and successful plan of development to make social care services easily accessible, properly trained and well respected? Do the Government have a development plan in mind for social care?

The noble Lord raises such an important point. I am sure he will also be thinking about the vexed issue of hospital discharge and all the issues that are creating such difficulties in the system. I emphasise that adult social care is part of our vision for a neighbourhood health service, shifting care from hospitals to communities, with the NHS working alongside local authorities, social care providers and the voluntary sector. I am sure we are all looking forward to the announcement of the 10-year health plan, looking at how we can move healthcare from hospitals to the community but recognising that all agencies out in the community have a vital part to play to make this story successful.

My Lords, the Government have rightly adopted a preventive approach as far as the NHS is concerned. Does my noble friend agree that it would be a good idea to apply this to social care as well? To take, for example, unpaid carers—I can never resist the temptation to remind your Lordships that they save the nation £192 billion a year—if you put in a small amount of support for those unpaid carers at an early point in their caring journey, you can often prevent a crisis arising. It surely makes very sound economic sense to adopt this preventive approach to social care.

The noble Baroness has made the case for us all. As we know, one of the main pillars of changing the health system we have is to move from sickness to prevention. I believe you can transfer that logic and thinking to this area. We have fantastic examples of different neighbourhoods having stepped up to the plate, working to bridge the gap between the health service and local social care providers and working with carers as well. It is critical that we look at the examples of good practice and work out how we can roll them out so that we can make the shift that needs to be made.

My Lords, in January the Government announced that they will develop a shared digital platform to allow up-to-date medical information to be shared between the NHS and care staff. How much progress has been made in developing this digital platform?

It will come as no surprise to the noble Baroness that I cannot give her the detail on that question, but I will be very happy to get back to her with an update on where we have got to. Obviously, the whole area of digitalisation is another of the pillars in moving the health service forward. So many people collect data but do not use it. We are very good at harvesting it but not actually analysing it and working out how we can use it to best effect. But it is one of the commitments.

My Lords, what discussions are being held with private sector care companies to require them, in exchange for the often considerable amount of money they receive from the public purse, to work with education institutions to provide high-quality training for social care staff in their local area?

My noble friend raises an important point. If we are moving to a neighbourhood health service, we need to engage with local social care providers and make sure that they are part of the mix. This is where the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is starting. She is bringing everyone together to talk about how to deliver this. We need to make sure that our training institutions are engaged and that everyone who can contribute is around the table to move things forward.