Hospital Parking Charges (Exemption for Carers) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-30
Topic: Social Welfare
David Nuttall (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful for the work carers do in my own constituency, particularly at the carers centre I visited recently, which provides a wide range of activities and support for those who undertake the often unsung job of caring for a loved on. I also pay tribute to the work that Carers UK does, as the principal national charity for carers. Of course, it very much supports the Bill, in this its golden jubilee year The aim of the hon. Lady’s Park the Charge campaign, which has resulted in the Bill, is to improve the financial position of carers who have to use hospital car parks by exempting them from car parking charges. Without doubt, the Bill is well intentioned, and no one from across the House would disagree with the proposition that helping those who selflessly care for others is a worthy aim. The first difficulty, however, facing anyone determining the size and nature of a group is that of definition, and that applies to carers as much as to any other. Carers UK says there are 6.5 million carers in the UK, with 5.4 million of them living in England. As I tried to mention earlier, the Bill only applies to England so that is the relevant figure Carers UK goes on to state that these people are providing unpaid care for their loved ones, saving the economy an enormous £119 billion each year, yet its research found that 48% of carers were struggling to make ends meet, and 45% said that financial worries were affecting their own health. It is no surprise, therefore, that Carers UK and the Bill seek to alleviate one of the financial pressures on carers—hospital car parking charges. However, I have several concerns, ranging from the Bill’s drafting to its financial implications and potential impact on other groups It is not clear to me how we can objectively determine who should and should not be expected to pay for car parking, as we would be doing if we started centrally exempting one particular group as being more deserving than another group. It would seem preferable to allow individual NHS trusts to continue making such decisions locally. Otherwise, on the face of it, we seem to have here a fair and reasonable proposal. Indeed, my initial thought was that it sounded like a good thing to do, and I suspect that most people’s instinct would be to support the Bill simply because of the title I know that the hon. Lady has campaigned on this issue with the best intentions, but I want to deal precisely with the exemptions she seeks to introduce. The Bill would exempt two groups of carers. The first is defined in clauses 1 to 3. Clause 2 states that beneficiaries of an exemption would either be in receipt of carer’s allowance or have an underlying entitlement to it. Carer’s allowance is a taxable benefit currently set at £62.10 a week to help a carer look after someone with substantial caring needs, and it is paid to the carer, not the recipient of the care. To qualify, the applicant must be over 16, spend at least 35 hours a week caring for someone, have been in England, Scotland or Wales for at least two of the last three years and not be in full-time education or studying for 21 hours a week or more. The person in receipt of care must receive qualifying benefits, such as the daily living component of the personal independence payment, the middle or highest care rate of the disability living allowance, attendance allowance or the armed forces independence payment That is the first group to which we can start to put a number. According to Department for Work and Pensions figures, as of February, 721,000 people were receiving carer’s allowance, so these people would be the first group that would clearly qualify under the criteria. However, the Bill would go further, by also including within the first group all those who have what is referred to as an underlying entitlement to carer’s allowance. The term "underlying entitlement" refers to the fact that a claimant cannot usually receive two income-replacement benefits together—for example, carer’s allowance and the state pension. This is called the overlapping benefit rule. If a person is not entitled to be paid carer’s allowance because of this rule, they are said to have an underlying entitlement to carer’s allowance instead. This might mean they could get the carer’s premium in jobseeker’s allowance and income support, the extra amount for carers in pension credit or the carer’s allowance element of universal credit. The importance of including those people is that the Bill would otherwise exclude carers in receipt of other benefits, such as the state pension, bereavement allowance, contribution-based employment and support allowance, contribution-based jobseeker’s allowance, incapacity benefit, industrial death benefit, maternity allowance, severe disablement allowance, universal credit, war widow’s or widower’s pension or widow’s pension Not surprisingly, the inclusion of these people significantly increases the number of those eligible under the Bill. DWP figures, as of February, estimate this group to number 409,000. Taken together, therefore, clauses 1 to 3 could exempt approximately 1.13 million people. These people are either receiving carer’s allowance or have an underlying entitlement to it. As the hon. Lady will be aware, in the north-west, where both our constituencies are located, there are 163,000 such people. To give some idea of the massive increase in the number of carers in recent years, I should add that the figure of 1.13 million is up from 451,000 in February 2000 If, however, the definition of entitlement is applied in strict accordance with clause 2, the Bill would exclude, a university student caring for a disabled parent, for example. I suspect that the second group of potential beneficiaries was defined for people in such a position. The Bill therefore draws a distinction between a "qualifying carer"—someone caught by clause 2—and an "eligible carer", as defined in clauses 4 to 6. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) touched on this, and I pointed out in an intervention that the figure of 1.13 million—the figure quoted by Opposition Members as being the total number involved—seemed to ignore completely those included under clauses 4 to 6 Clause 5(1)(a) defines the eligible carer as someone who "has been assessed for free hospital parking" by virtue of an amendment to the Care Act 2014, which this Bill would insert. The Bill proposes to amend section 10 of the 2014 Act, which deals with carer’s assessments. A carer’s assessment is made by a trained person either from the council or another organisation that the council works with. The Bill will make it a mandatory requirement for the assessor to assess "whether the carer should be eligible for free hospital…parking" This is in addition to assessing, as outlined in the rest of section 10— "(a) whether the carer is able, and is likely to continue to be able, to provide care for the adult needing care, (b) whether the carer is willing, and is likely to continue to be willing, to do so, (c) the impact of the carer’s needs for support on the matters specified in section 1(2), (d) the outcomes that the carer wishes to achieve in day-to-day life, and (e) whether, and if so to what extent, the provision of support could contribute to the achievement of those outcomes." It is not clear at all on what basis the assessor is expected to make this decision. If only eligibility or underlying eligibility to carer’s allowance is going to be checked, this provision is superfluous, as such people would be covered in the first group. If some other criteria are to be applied, there is nothing in the Bill or in any guidance notes—no such notes have been issued—to suggest what that might be Returning to my example of the student who is caring for a parent but cannot get carer’s allowance because of their studies, clause 5(1)(b) perhaps comes to the rescue. It says an "eligible carer" is a person who "provides or intends to provide substantial care on a regular basis, other than by virtue of a contract or as voluntary work and has been certified as such by an appropriate clinician." I believe that the meaning is ambiguous. What does "intend to provide" mean? How far into the future is it expected that the care will be delivered—within the next week, the next month, the next year, or what? The Bill does not say. Or is a fixed timescale not required; is consideration of caring enough? What constitutes "substantial care" in this provision? Is it the 35 hours a week required to be eligible for the carer’s allowance, or is it fewer than 35 hours a week? We need to know, because the Bill is asking an assessor to be the ultimate arbiter of whether someone is entitled to free hospital parking charges Suddenly, the number of people who might benefit from free hospital parking becomes a lot less certain. The first group gave us 1.13 million people. How many more of the 5.4 million carers estimated by Carers UK to be living in England would be included in the second group? We simply do not know.