Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-30
Topic: Health
Narendra Babubhai Patel (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am pleased to have added my name to this amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. The greatest risk identified for health and social care in the House of Lords report The Long-term Sustainability of the NHS and Adult Social Care was the need for long-term funding arrangements for social care and, importantly, for an appropriately trained workforce for the NHS and social care. As far as social care is concerned, the Government have not addressed either, and more than three years have passed since the publication of the report. The result is that more care homes are closed and there is a massive shortage of care home staff, as has already been mentioned As a nation, we are getting to a point where "shameful" is the only word that can describe our failure to look after our old and frail. The pandemic has brought hardship and pain to all our citizens, but the elderly in our care homes have paid a heavy price: 30,500 excess deaths among care home residents and 4,400 more among those receiving care at home. We have failed them in many ways. We have exposed them to greater risk from the virus, we did not protect the few staff looking after them and we did not recognise their increased risk from the virus. It seems that the only people who stood by them were nurses and poorly paid care staff, the majority of whom are from overseas ONS figures show that social care workers are at highest risk of Covid-19 mortality. Shamefully, the United Kingdom ranks number two in the world, after Russia, for the number of deaths among healthcare workers, and the majority of them worked in social care. Some of the poorly paid and so-called unskilled paid with their lives. Many of them were not citizens of our country. We saw on our televisions poorly paid staff, many from European and other countries, working in crowded nursing homes and living in tents in the back gardens of nursing homes so that they could isolate and protect our elderly and vulnerable, who were also isolated from their families and friends It is estimated that we have a shortfall of approximately 122,000 care workers. So what are we saying to these dedicated, hard-working people who want to come and willingly look after our most vulnerable? We are saying, "When your visa runs out, we want you to go back to where you came from. We don’t want any more of you to come. You will not meet the unrealistic criteria we set for salaries, and the visa and health charges will be unaffordable for you as these are now our new rules. Besides, we are going to have mass unemployment, and we are going to ask all those unemployed to staff our care homes and look after our elderly. We don’t recognise that it is a task that requires some skills, compassion and a caring attitude or a feeling of vocation, as you do." It is time for the Home Office to review the current proposals, which do not provide a migratory route for care workers. This is a modest amendment, in that it asks for a review. All it asks is that the Government produce evidence of the impact of the legislation on the social care workforce and social care. I strongly support it, and I hope that many others will do so. It is about people whom we need—those who want the opportunity to provide compassionate care for the elderly and the frail I know that my namesake leads the Home Office, and we know each other, but I say to her, "Priti, on this occasion, I do not agree with you".