Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-04-05
Topic: Social Welfare
Margaret Eileen Joyce Wheeler (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I open this group from these Benches by speaking to Motion G1 on the care cap. My noble friend Lord Hunt will speak to Motion A on integrated care boards, my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley will speak to Motion E on carers, and we will leave the issue of palliative care under Motion L1 in the capable hands of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Campbell, for their support in respect of the social care cap I hope that my Motion G1 on social care will provide the opportunity that the Government so sorely need to think again about how the care cap is to be implemented—in particular, the impact that its proposed changes to the eligibility and charging rules before the cap kicks in will have on hundreds of thousands of lives across some of the most deprived areas of the country I remind the House that, despite the Prime Minister’s pledge that nobody should have to sell their homes, the fact is that somebody with assets of £100,000 will lose almost everything while someone with assets worth £1 million and over will keep almost everything. People with low levels of wealth will be exposed to the same care costs as the very wealthiest in society. They will end up spending the largest levels of their income on care. As my colleague, the shadow Minister Karin Smyth, succinctly put it: "No wait for care will be shortened because of this Bill and nobody excluded from care will now receive it".—[Official Report, Commons, 30/3/22; col. 941.] Since the Government’s announcement of the £86,000 cap last year, and then, two months later, the body blow of not allowing local authority contributions to people’s care to accrue towards the cap, designed to save £900 million, the evidence for all this has been stacking up every day, and it is overwhelming. Extensive modelling and evidence by stakeholders such as Age UK, Mencap, the Alzheimer’s Society, and from the King’s Fund, Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation expert think tanks, prove just how badly older people and working-age disabled adults with no assets or with modest means will fare under the current charging proposals Even the Government’s own impact assessment figures show more than one in five older people will not see the benefits of the cap at all, and poorer care users are much more likely to die before they reach the cap than others with the same care needs. Alzheimer’s Society research shows that, without means-tested local authority funding counting towards the cap, only 21% of people with dementia will reach it, and it could take people drawing on care double the amount of time to get there, compared to the original Dilnot proposals On top of this—and particularly alarming in light of the Government’s professed levelling-up ambitions—the joint research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Health Foundation clearly demonstrates that, among older people, those affected and worse off will be the ones with modest assets and wealth living in the north-east, Yorkshire and the Humber, and the Midlands. Regionally, just 16% of people with dementia in the north-east and 19% of people with dementia in the east Midlands would hit the cap, compared to 29% in the south-east. The Minister’s repeated claim that no one will lose out when compared to the current system, or face unpredictable care costs, flies in the face of all this. As the Health Foundation says of the new charging basis, "the changes are poorly conceived and a step in the wrong direction", taking protection away from poorer home owners and working-age adults with care needs The Government must therefore look closely at the evidence and think again. My Motion provides a structured way of enabling them to do just that. We are calling for: regulations to be drawn up that define how the costs accrued to meeting eligible needs are determined, as well as specifying the timescale for care cap implementation; ensuring that local authority care contributions, as well as individual private contributions, count towards the care cap; ensuring that the results of the much-vaunted, but little explained, five local authority care cap trail-blazer pilots that have just been set up are evaluated and open to parliamentary scrutiny before the cap is implemented; and, just as important, ensuring the completion of a further impact assessment that provides a detailed regional analysis and breakdown of eligibility for social care and the effect of the cap on working-age, disabled adults under 40. The final point in the Motion concerns this, and the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, has again spoken very movingly on this vital issue, which any plan to fix social care—and particularly this one—has to address The five trail-blazer councils—Wolverhampton, Blackpool, Cheshire East, Newham and North Yorkshire —are developing and testing the new charging system, and they will be early implementers of the cap in January 2023 before rollout in October. I noticed the DHSC fanfare press release announcing them claims that they will, "implement a new and improved adult social care charging reform system" Can the Minister explain how a system which has already started cutting costs at the expense of some of the poorest people in our society can be "new and improved" The press release also says of the pilots that the "insight … and lessons learned … will be useful to providers and authorities … allowing the Department of Health and Social Care to test key aspects of the reforms … The initiative will generate valuable evidence and insight to help the Government to monitor progress, identify challenges and improve understanding." In the light of the growing evidence of the impact that the charging proposals will have in some of the most deprived areas of the country, can the Minister explain why the trail-blazers’ remit has not been widened to look closely at these vital issues too? These pilots must focus not only on systems and implementation but also on the vital work and analysis that the impact of the revised charging arrangements will have on the communities they cover and on people desperately in need of social care support We must ensure that we understand the full impact of the changes before they are implemented. That is why the further impact assessment on regional eligibility and other issues such as the impact on working-age disabled adults, called for in my Motion, is also important. These are all issues not addressed in the Bill’s current impact assessment. The savings that the Government are aiming to make by reducing eligibility for the care cap and not allowing local authority costs to accrue towards the cap will result in older and poorer people in some of the most deprived areas of the country, and working-age disabled adults, paying more towards the cost of their care, particularly those with life-long conditions. My Motion provides a structured way forward for the Government to look closely at the mounting stakeholder and independent evidence and think again.