Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2021-12-07
Topic: Social Welfare
Jane Susan Campbell (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Stevens on his maiden speech. Our past collaborations were always so productive. I look forward to working with him as a fellow Cross-Bencher In this debate, I will focus on the missing part of the jigsaw in the Government’s Health and Care Bill. It requires further amendment if it is to address the care crisis for working-age disabled people. As drafted, this legislation hardly touches on the desperately needed funding reforms for that cohort. Instead, it is largely about inheritance. So much has been made of some people having to draw on their property and liquid assets to pay for social care that protecting accumulated wealth has become the overriding goal of reform. Under the reforms, the offspring of some wealthier homeowners will enjoy a more generous inheritance when they die. However, for disabled people, the Bill takes them nowhere and continues to limit their life chances. We all aspire to owning a home, providing for a family and saving for retirement—living life to the full. For thousands of disabled people, this is not possible without social care support Over a third of people who use social care are disabled people of working age. Their support accounts for at least half of council expenditure on social care. Persistent underinvestment by successive Governments has had two major consequences: first, fewer people have access to the support they need to live, even at a basic level, unless they can privately resource it, which means that they cannot play their part in the community either socially or economically; and, secondly, local councils, faced with ever-tighter budgets, are balancing their books by increasing charges for care. This effectively wipes out the funding that disabled people receive from the DWP to meet their extra living costs and avoid poverty The Care Act 2014 went some way to address this injustice. According to the Health Foundation, the amendment to the Care Act in the current Bill will not do so. It says: "Consider a disabled person with no assets, care needs amounting to £500 per week and an income of £50 per week above the minimum income guarantee. If the £86,000 ceiling is reached taking account of their care costs, they will contribute the £50 for 3.3 years. However, if the £86,000 ceiling is to be reached using only their own contributions, it will take them 33 years to reach it. Put simply, they will be 10 times worse off under this Bill." This will clearly deny countless generations of disabled people the same economic opportunities. The Bill effectively favours wealthier homeowners over those with more modest assets and lifelong disabilities. That cannot be right As the national network Social Care Future clearly identifies in its material, "we all want to live in the place we call home with the people and things that we love … doing the things that matter to us" Social care exists to support us all in that ambition. We know that government investment in social care for working-age disabled people will pay dividends. This Bill provides the perfect opportunity to do just that, if—and only if—it is amended. It is simply unfair to place some people at greater economic disadvantage because they happen to be disabled. I really look forward to working with the Minister on this Bill to make it fully inclusive and fair for all.