Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-07
Topic: Immigration
Robin Granville Hodgson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I listened carefully to the powerful opening speech from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who is very experienced in this field, and to the speeches that have followed. Who can argue about the need for a properly skilled, staffed, trained social care workforce? "Skilled and settled", I think, was the phrase used by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton. That is why the issues in subsections (3)(a), (3)(b), (3)(c) and (3)(d) in the noble Lord’s proposed new clause seem entirely appropriate questions to ask. But when they are tied back into an immigration Bill, I begin to get nervous. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, talked about contradictions, and I listened carefully to what he said, but the fact is that the issues in subsections (3)(a) to (d) are issues for the sector not linked directly to the immigration matter we are discussing this evening I recognise I am probably swimming against the tide, but it is important to realise that workplace psychologists will tell you that you go to work for three reasons. First, you go for the money, and let us not be precious about that. Secondly, and equally importantly, you go for what they call self-actualisation —to improve and increase your life skills, work with decent people, have career progression, have a good performance that is noted and rewarded and, hopefully, operate in an atmosphere of good team spirit. Those are the internal desires most people have in going to work The third area is external reputation. When you mention where you work, what do people say in the saloon bar of The Dog and Duck or around the table at a dinner party It is worth taking those three yardsticks and applying them to the social care sector. First, there is the money. There is no getting around it: £8.70 an hour is clearly not good enough when compared with £9 for stacking shelves in a supermarket. However, money is not the only motivator here, and when we turn to self-actualisation —the second of the criteria that I mentioned—the situation is quite serious. I have had the privilege of serving on the boards of many companies in my career. When I join one, I often say, "Tell me about your staff turnover." No staff turnover is not an attractive thing; very often it means that the company has got a bit complacent and is not at the cutting edge, and that the service is not as good as it could be. You want some staff turnover—5%, 10%, that sort of level—to provide the dynamic but, if it rises above that level, it is operationally destructive, distracting and expensive, and the quality of the service starts to fall away I understand that in 2018-19 there was a 32.2% turnover in directly employed staff in the sector. Worse, among care workers the turnover was 39.5%. Further evidence of a lack of considered career progression is that half the workforce—excluding registered professionals —have no relevant social care qualifications, which seems to me a question not of money but of managerial grip and organisation, and of making the sector better managed Lastly, on the external reputation, one of the great advantages and developments of the pandemic is that people have begun to see how useful, worthwhile and attractive social care can be. People have begun to think about it. Long may that continue but, historically, we all must accept that its reputation has not been that good. This is a system under acute stress, as many noble Lords have said. The danger of amendments such as these is that they will result in new arrivals, and that immigration will be used as a crutch to maintain what is close to being a broken system. I cannot believe that this is the right approach. More importantly, if the sector believes that it has a "get out of jail free" card, to use the inference that the Minister made when winding up at Second Reading, then there is no pressure on the sector to make any improvements or changes to how the businesses are run or operated, nor indeed is there any pressure on the Government to do likewise. We must find ways to improve the operational performance and the financial performance I have two final points. First, on the issue of morality, referred to by my noble friend Lord Lilley, the noble Baronesses, Lady Barker and Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, recruitment in this area is a zero-sum game. What we have, other people lose. Maybe one could say that within the EU there is sufficient prosperity for us not to worry about it, but the noble Lord, Lord Patel, mentioned the wider recruitment. This is a very serious issue. We must look ourselves in the mirror and decide whether it is right and fair for us to be recruiting doctors, nurses and care workers from less- developed countries. It may be serious within the EU, but it certainly is serious around the world I will give just one example. When the Ebola virus struck Sierra Leone, there were 136 doctors there, one for every 45,000 people; in this country, the equivalent figure is one for every 300 people. At that time, there were 27 Sierra Leone doctors working in the NHS. If we had not employed those people, we could have given a 20% boost to Sierra Leone’s health facilities. It is not the answer but when we set out our stall for the future we must consider our attitude towards the less developed world, and whether we will, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said, take ourselves out of the international market for health and social care workers.