LGBT+ People and Spouses: Social Care

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Richard Foord

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Robert, and to respond to the debate on behalf of the shadow Health and Social Care team in my first outing as the newly appointed shadow Minister of State for Social Care. It is always good to see the Minister for Public Health in his place.

I sincerely thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for securing the debate and for all her work on this important subject. Her contribution this afternoon was heartbreaking —the way in which her constituent was treated was utterly shameful. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for her contribution. She ended on such a powerful poem, which speaks to so many who suffer in care home settings.

The Care Quality Commission guidance for all providers of adult social care clearly states that people using care services

“must not be discriminated against in any way and the provider must take account of protected characteristics, set out in the Equality Act 2010.”

As we have heard today and as we know from other studies, however, that is not always the case.

A survey conducted in 2017 found that 23% of open LGBT+ respondents who had been in a care home or other form of institutional care reported that being gay, trans, bisexual or lesbian, or having other protected characteristics, had a negative effect on the care that they received. Those examples are varied, but each and every one of them is concerning. Some respondents to the 2017 survey said that they felt invisible. Other responses related to use of language—for example the assumption that a partner or spouse is of the opposite sex, when that is not necessarily the case.

At their worst, the experiences of LGBT+ people in care home settings can be traumatic, as demonstrated by the story of Noel Glynn and his partner Ted Brown, who is a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood. Before he died, it is reported that Mr Glynn, who had dementia, suffered bruising across his body and had a cigarette burn on the back of his hand because of abuse from care staff. Other residents warned his partner Ted not to reveal to staff that he and Noel were a couple, saying, “That won’t be good for either of you”.

Mr Glynn and Mr Brown sued Lambeth Council, but Mr Glynn very sadly died before any compensatory payments were made. This case is beyond abhorrent. I hope the Minister will set out how it happened and what steps the Government are taking to ensure that it never happens again. The Minister will know that the Care Quality Commission does not currently consider the extent of homophobia or transphobia in inspections, despite its fundamental standards. Following this case, will the Minister look again at that guidance?

More generally, what this issue comes down to is the importance of personalised care. A report by the Women and Equalities Committee published in 2019 points to research showing that 72% of care workers do not consider sexual orientation to be relevant to one’s health needs. That same report states that

“most health and social care professionals feel under-equipped to deal with LGBT people’s needs rather than intentionally discriminating.”

The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 are clear on this subject. Regulation 9 states that people using a service should have care or treatment that is personalised specifically for them. It is important that care providers respond to the serious concerns raised by LGBT+ people and ensure that those accessing services feel respected and safe, and benefit from care that is tailored to their needs.

My questions to the Minister are as follows. Given the extraordinary shortages in adult social care staff—sitting at around 165,000—what work are he and his Department doing to protect the principle of personalised care? Further, what steps is the Department taking to monitor the experiences of LGBT+ people in social care settings? In the 2018 LGBT action plan, the Government pledged to develop best-practice guidance for monitoring and to make this openly available to the public sector. Why were these pledges not implemented? Have they simply been abandoned alongside a plethora of other Government commitments, from banning conversion therapy to tackling waiting lists? Finally, LGBT+ organisations have called for better guidelines and staff training for those working in care settings. Can the Minister outline whether the Government support these calls?

The next Labour Government will address the vacancies in social care by delivering a new deal for care workers, guaranteeing fair pay, training, terms and conditions and career progression.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I am curious to know from the shadow Minister what fair pay in the social care sector would be. What does he think of the Liberal Democrat proposal to pitch an additional £2 per hour minimum wage for social care workers?

[Andrew Gwynne]

If the hon. Gentleman had been at the TUC conference today, he would have heard the shadow Deputy Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), outline precisely what Labour’s fair pay deal will be for the social care sector, but we need to go beyond that. We need to ensure that social care becomes a valued profession again, rather than just assuming that agency staff can fill the vacancies. We need to make sure that social care once again has parity with the rest of the healthcare system and that care workers want to work in the care sector not just because of pay, terms and conditions, but because it is a profession—which, sadly, many feel it no longer is.

We will work in partnership with users and families and develop a set of national standards based on existing minimum entitlements and legal rights, including legal rights that exist in the Equality Act 2010—a piece of legislation of which I am fiercely proud, and which the last Labour Government took through Parliament and put on the statute book. We need to make sure that all service delivery, particularly in social care, meets the ambitions and legal expectations of the Equality Act—sadly, that has let down so many LGBT+ people in the social care sector, as we have seen from the statistics in the surveys that I have cited this afternoon.

We would also ensure that our commitment to raise standards right across the sector is upheld by requiring all care providers to demonstrate financial sustainability and, crucially for this debate, to deliver high quality care for service users before they are allowed to receive contracts from local authorities, making sure that local authorities commission care providers who are capable of delivering the care that people need at the standard we should expect. That would result in more personalised and ultimately higher-quality care for all individuals.

In 2023 people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and others should not feel ostracised by a system that is there to support them. They should not feel ignored and that their personal needs are not being met. Ultimately, they should not feel the need to hide the fact that they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans or other. I hope that the Minister will agree with me that we can get to work on delivering that higher standard of care for all service users. The testimony that we have heard today from my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood should stand as that end point. Never again should somebody from the LGBT+ community be treated as we have heard. “Never again” should be more than a slogan. It should be deeds.