Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-07
Topic: Immigration
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the General Medical Council board I want to return to a major theme from Second Reading: the decision of the Home Office to exclude the great majority of care workers from the new health and care visa, as they do not meet either the income or the skills threshold. At Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, justified this by saying that employers had to end what she described as "the easy option" of using migrant labour to undercut our own workforce "for far too long". She also pointed to the advice of the Migration Advisory Committee, which has maintained that the problems in the care sector are caused by a failure to offer competitive terms and conditions, in itself caused by a failure to have a sustainable funding model—quite I certainly do not need reminding of how important skilled care worker jobs are; I want to see more people training and entering the care sector at a decent wage. However, surely it is disingenuous for the Government to call for better wages and conditions, when they have so much influence on the financial health of care services. The Government are the main source of funds for local authorities; they are the direct funder of the National Health Service; and they set the conditions under which the private care market operates. The Home Office, which I have always thought of as being a bit semi-detached, is essentially saying that the Government—of which it is a part—has neglected the care sector over many years. They have been in government for 10 years now and have had a series of reviews, none of which has come to fruition Our own House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee reported that, in 2018, 1.4 million older people in England had an unmet care need. It found that publicly funded social care support is shrinking, as diminishing budgets have forced local authorities to limit the numbers of people receiving public funding. Just as demand goes up with the demographics, the funding of social care gets lower and lower in real terms When we turn to the workforce, we see a diverse range of nationalities and backgrounds. Some 83% of the workforce is made up of British nationalities, with 7% coming from other EEA countries and 9% from non-EEA countries. As such, the UK is reliant on a fair and balanced immigration system. Overall, however, the social care workforce is already facing a crisis, with more than 120,000 vacancies and a growing level of demand among people who need to access care services. This is a real problem for the future We also have the problem that the Government classify social care workers as unskilled. Unskilled? As Mencap points out, their colleagues are trusted every day with people’s lives. They are trained to provide medication, to undertake feeding, to deal with seizures and to administer first aid. They help people manage their finances, their health and their well-being, and they provide emotional support. Unskilled they are not. Yet as Unison has pointed out, many migrant workers are not included in the category of people who have had their visas extended free for a year. Many are struggling to save the large amounts needed for visa renewals The Minister says that staff should be paid more. I agree, but is she going to will the means? Will she commit to increasing the level of support to local authorities? Is she willing to see self-funders pay more? If she is, I remind her that if you took the current lifetime pension allowance of £1,730,000 and bought an annuity with it at age 60, you would not have enough to pay the average nursing home fee We are in a vicious cycle. After decades of reviews and failed reforms, the level of unmet need in our care system is increasing and the pressure on unpaid carers is growing stronger. The supply of care providers is diminishing and the strain on the care workforce is continuing. And that is before these new immigration controls are imposed at the end of the year At Second Reading, the noble Baroness said that she would not be drawn on the details of the long-term social care plan which apparently the Government are still promising to bring forward. She did refer to various sides in the Commons trying to sort a consensus on the way forward, but there is not much sign yet of the Government reaching out, and given the state of the public finances, I would not bet on immediate action in any case. I refer the noble Baroness to the letter in July from the Chancellor to Secretaries of State on the forthcoming comprehensive spending review. From that, it is clear that spending will come under a huge squeeze. It is noticeable that, while the Chancellor said then that he would prioritise the NHS, no mention was made of social care at all The argument I put before noble Lords is this. If the Home Office is convinced that the woes of the care sector are entirely down to the sector itself, let it produce the evidence. Let Ministers agree to the quick review that I suggest in my amendment, looking at the funding of the sector and the impact of Clause 1 before shutting off an extremely valuable source of labour for this important but vulnerable part of our society. I beg to move.