Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-07
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Ludford (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, we have heard from across the Committee the concern about this crisis in social care. Many noble Lords have considerable expertise on this topic and I am grateful to them for sharing their knowledge History will record the failure to deal with the fragile state of the provision and funding of social care as one of the major failures in domestic policy, and one has to say that particularly of the last 10 years of Conservative and Conservative-led government. I wish that as much energy had been applied to this subject as to Brexit. It shows a peculiar set of priorities I do not know whether the Government are being ideologically pure, to use the term employed by my noble friend Lady Barker. I certainly think that they are being obdurate and, I am afraid, unintelligent in not responding to the enormous problems in social care. The idea that in a short space of time we are going to find loads of people in the United Kingdom who want to work in this sector when they have never previously shown any interest in, inclination towards or aptitude for such work is pie in the sky. We learn that there are 120,000—the noble Lord, Lord Hain, referred to an estimate of 133,000—vacancies in the social care sector. When a quarter of a million social care workers—that is, 20% of the workforce—are EU or non-EU nationals, the ending of free movement under this Bill will lead to even greater shortages of staff I agree that it is wrong to exclude care workers from the health and care visa route, since only maybe senior care workers will be included under the salary level criterion. My understanding is that Canada and New Zealand have sector-specific visa routes. Since they are flavour of the month, why don’t we follow countries like them I was very moved by the tragic account from the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, of the suicide of quite a young man through the fear of a lack of care. I experienced this a little when my late husband, four years before he died, had to have a leg amputated due to sepsis. He benefited from carer support, as well as, I hope, from my support. I can absolutely relate to the emotions—the fear and anxiety—of people, whether the elderly or those with a range of disabilities, who do not know whether they will be able to get care either in a care home or in their own home As many noble Lords have pointed out, low skilled and low paid does not equal low value. My noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, referred to the right caring personality being one of the necessary skills, but somehow that seems to be disregarded as though it comes with the territory, not least with women. Women are expected to be natural carers; well, we are not necessarily My noble friend Lady Barker referred to an acute and growing need for paid social care as the number of people without children grows to, I think she said, 2 million in 2030. I am one of those guilty parties—I have failed to grow the population—and my noble friend makes a very good point. Many families are not necessarily in a position anyway to provide care within the family, but she makes a very good point about a factor that increases the necessity Various amendments call for a review. Some of them could talk about health and social care but the emphasis in this debate, just like Amendment 2, which was very ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, has rightly been concentrated on the social care sector, which is where we are facing a crisis. One of the factors in that crisis is going to be the lack of an adequate workforce, and quite honestly it is astonishing if the Government do not respond to that. I hope the Minister can give us some hope of progress when she replies to the debate.