King’s Speech

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Thursday 9th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register. It is a great privilege to be able to partake in this debate. I was pleased that my noble friend the Minister opened with his own personal remarks because I want to shape what I am going to say around my personal experiences.

I want to talk about hate in schools. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, it was hate because of the colour of your skin; today, sadly, most of the hate is because of the faith you belong to. It is so important to raise this because schools should be a place where children go to learn, to be happy, to have well-being and not—like as I experienced when I was a child—a place of dread. Every single day going to school was: were they going to be nice to me? Were they going to call me names? Were they going to beat me up or try to beat me up?

Sadly, earlier this year I saw a report on anti-Hindu hate in schools. Hate of any kind, for any faith, is unacceptable, but 1.6% of the population of this country is British Hindu. It is a community that does not make a noise or raise its voice against things because, by and large, it just gets on. But it was so sad when I came across parents who had moved their children several times because they had been called names, identified as non-believers, told they would burn in hell and had different types of meat chucked at them. I say this because we all have a duty of care, but local authorities were put in charge of reporting bullying or hate incidents. I worry because, when you give a local authority that authority, I do not know how much it can fairly find time to investigate. It is critical that every single child going to school feels that everyone is on their side.

After I read the report, I went out to speak to parents, and I found that this was not a small but a large problem. I have stood up and fought against discrimination all of my life, and I will fight for every faith and for every child to be able to go to school and have a safe haven, where the teachers will not stand by and allow this practice to carry on. But when I found that some parents had reported their children telling them that the teachers had not intervened to stop it, that raised some red flags. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will take this back to the Department for Education because it is critical that, in this day and age, we should respect each other’s faith and have tolerance—I do not like that word—or respect for each other’s identities, which is so important.

I know how difficult it was to go to school and the knotted feeling I had in my stomach, thinking, “Will they be my friend today or not? Will the teacher be nice to me or not?” It is not acceptable that that is still happening all of these years later. So, in his response, can my noble friend the Minister assure me that the concerns I raise will be taken to the Department for Education and the Secretary of State?

I have raised many times in this Chamber my concerns about the disadvantage that children from low-income families face, particularly those from minority communities and those, like those in my city of Leicester, where there are incredibly disadvantaged people from the white, Asian and black communities. When we talk about the digital age and all of these things being part of our lives, I do not want those children to miss out. So I would appreciate an assurance about how we work to ensure that they are part and parcel of our discussions, so that no child is at a disadvantage in being able to aspire to their full potential.

The important thing for me, like the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and many people who have come from the Indian subcontinent, is that this country has given us an opportunity because of education and how social mobility enables us to enjoy this country’s wealth and growth. I do not want children growing up today to miss out on those opportunities. So it is critical—I repeat this—that the parents are part of the solution. Mothers and fathers from minority communities need to be able to speak English and understand the services available to them. They cannot integrate if they cannot communicate.

I therefore urge my noble friend the Minister to make sure that my concerns are heard. Too many communities are still left behind because of inability in language skills, which then reduces all the other possibilities that those young people could have.

I am glad that there were not lots of Bills in the King’s Speech, because I want quality, not quantity; I want it to be based on delivery and not because we want to tag everything on to a Bill. However, I would like all religious places and all places with charitable status, if they are teaching children, to have Ofsted inspections, because it is critical that we know that children are not being taught in an environment that encourages hate.

Domestic Violence and Brain Injury

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I add my condolences following the passing of Sir Bobby Charlton—a true great. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for the work he has done in this space; it is another example of where being asked a Question forces us to look at the situation. The noble Lord made the point very well. Sport is in the news, and we have all seen the head injury assessment protocols, especially in rugby, but you are 11 times more likely to suffer a traumatic brain injury from domestic violence than you are from sport. When we get the findings from the research, early in the new year, I invite the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to join me in ensuring that we have an action-oriented approach to make sure that the awareness and research supports a good action plan.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend assure me and the House that, when he is collecting data, he will also be looking at people from minority communities, particularly those who cannot report domestic violence issues for language reasons? Would my noble friend also talk to his colleagues in education, to ensure that everyone living in this country has access to learning English?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Yes, on both counts. Unfortunately, domestic violence is something that affects all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds and minorities. About 5.7% of women and 3% of men, and a lot of children, are thought to suffer domestic violence. I am absolutely happy to give that undertaking.

NHS: Discharge to Assess Policy

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. First, carers need respite, so will the Government focus on ensuring that carers’ families are given respite so that they can have some quality of life, which, at the moment, is not readily available to them? Secondly, will my noble friend the Minister please look yet again at the minimum that councils can pay providers for delivering adult social care?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

First, I repeat that the needs of carers, including for a break, some respite, are very much understood. Part of the £292 million fund in 2022-23 is in place to try to give unpaid carers a week’s break. On the second part of the question, I will need to come back to my noble friend in writing.

Mental Health: Advertising and Body Image

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a really important point about a contributing factor to people having poor body image. We know that there are influencers who promote certain products, and that they often alter their own image so that it is almost an idealistic image—whatever that means. Young people then feel inadequate when looking at those images. We also must recognise that this issue affects not just young people but a range of people—even older people. For them, it might be as a gentle a thing as a comb-over, but if that makes them feel better, great. We must look at this issue in its entirety, and it has been looked at as part of the online advertising programme.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, what will the Government do to ban or reduce the use of lightening creams? Among the south Asian and black community, we have an issue around the push for lightening creams, which affects the well-being of a lot of young people who desperately want to fit in.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

If I have been accurately briefed, I will begin by wishing my noble friend a very happy birthday.

This is a really important issue concerning ethnic minorities and people of different colours. First, young people want to see people who look like them on TV and in the media as role models, to show that they are part of everyday society. Also—I am sure my noble friend will be aware of this—sadly, there is the issue of colourism, whereby sometimes there is a preference for people of a lighter colour within certain ethnic minority groups. People who are darker are quite often discriminated against; they are not necessarily abused, but there is this preference for lighter colours. This is all being looked at. What my noble friend says shows what an incredibly complicated area this is. It is really important that we look at all these issues: is it size, is it appearance, is it colour?

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 5th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, is a stalwart of these debates and she always takes a view that is contrary to mine. I say at the beginning of my speech that I do not question her integrity in any way at all, but I do question the briefing on which she has based her speech tonight—and I question the briefing from this particular college. It has a public position which says that young women should have the option and be

“actively encouraged to take up a face-to-face appointment”.

That is the policy now; there is no policy that says that people cannot and should not be allowed to have a face-to-face appointment if they need it.

Secondly, this amendment would require there to be a face-to-face appointment, whereas the position arrived at following the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, and in the Commons is that a teleconsultation can happen and that, at that point, if it becomes evident that there is a need for a face-to-face appointment, it must happen. As we explained when we debated this issue a few weeks ago, the greatest coercion is on women not to have an abortion rather than women being forced to have an abortion. Professionals, who took great care to design the telemedicine system at the start of the pandemic, made sure that they included safeguarding as an integral part of what they did.

The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, is right in one respect and wrong in another. There was one case, within the first month of the scheme being set up, where a woman got her dates wrong. That was discovered and that case was used to change the questions and the training. I have to say that I take exception to her saying that there are dozens of cases, because in the peer-reviewed assessments that have been done in three countries, Scotland, England and Wales, that has not been seen to be the case. If anything, professionals have erred on the side of caution when they think that a woman might be approaching the deadline. I am afraid that in this respect I do not think the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, is correct.

More to the point, throughout the discussions here and in another place, the professionals who have been responsible for not just delivering the services but for making sure that they are within ethical and professional frameworks and are monitored closely took into account all the ways in which they thought that young women and girls might be exploited. They took care to make sure that the services discovered that, and they have. They have found young women who have been trafficked. They have found young women who have been pressurised by partners. They have found young women who were prevented from going out to get contraception and therefore became pregnant.

I do not for one minute question the noble Baroness’s motivation, but I say to noble Lords that if they really want to protect young women and particularly girls, they should reject this amendment and accept the government amendment, which has been informed not just by the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, and others but by the majority of the royal colleges that practise in this field.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I want to raise one thing that may be an unintended consequence of telemedicine abortion pills. In communities such as the one that I come from, having a girl is still seen as not a good sign of family life. I hope that when we discuss this, we discuss it in the round. There are communities in this country that may take advantage of the facts that women do not have to have a face-to-face and that women in those communities as often as not cannot communicate. We must ensure that we do not become complicit in them being forced into abortions. It is not about not wanting an abortion to be available if you require it. That is my point and my fear. I see it often in my community. It is not as if it is distant. It happens because those women and girls—some of them get married very early in life—do not have the ability to speak up, simply because of the confines of the communities they live in. I do not want it to be an unintended consequence that we end up being complicit in something that by and large is a choice issue but here may well become normalised within families where women and girls have very little say.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 24th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest in the register. I am making a very short intervention just to talk about care workers. While there has been a great emphasis on the NHS, the crisis that the care sector is facing now is absolutely devastating. I was with care managers this morning, and they were wondering how they were going to manage the next few weeks, never mind the next few years. I urge the Government to understand that it is not just about added training and it is certainly not about planning for the future when the crisis is now. The crisis in the future cannot actually be estimated now, because we are in a crisis now.

So I urge the Government to look at the key issue around the sectors, and that is money. It is funding. We devalue the very people we expect to have value for in looking after the elderly, the disabled and those who need help. I came here not wanting to intervene today, but I was actually pushed by what I saw this morning with my care managers. They are absolutely struggling, trying to work out where they are going to find these magical beings who do not exist, because they have left the sector as a result of being so poorly paid, so badly treated and so deeply undervalued by everyone. I just wanted to put that intervention on record because, while we do need workforce planning, the problem is that we are so far behind the curve that it is going to take one mighty big plan to get this right.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to follow the noble Baroness because my amendment relates to this issue. My Amendment 174 would require the Secretary of State to publish a report on the work undertaken to bring parity of pay between health and social care services.

When reflecting on the pandemic, it is clear that we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to our key workers, who went above and beyond the call of duty to keep people safe and healthy. Their efforts resulted in a deserved pay rise for NHS front-line staff. However, it highlighted the disparity between the treatment of healthcare staff and social care staff. While we clapped for both every Thursday, the gap in pay and reward between the two professions has grown even larger. This amendment reflects the undeniable need to see care staff recognised equally alongside NHS staff.

The social care workforce is, and needs to be, highly skilled. It holds a heavy weight of responsibility for the well-being and safety of vulnerable adults and children. Staff are trained to support medication, undertake PEG feeding, deal with seizures and administer first aid. They help people manage their finances, health and well-being, and they provide emotional support. They operate within a highly regulated sector, necessitating an understanding of health and safety, mental capacity and deprivation of liberty law, safeguarding and even how to positively manage challenging behaviour. The importance of their role cannot be underestimated. Indeed, the same can be said for other, highly skilled allied health professionals, such as nurses and occupational therapists, whose breadth of interventions provide enormous value within the care sector, as well as within the NHS. The turnover rate is just so high. It is unsurprising that staff such as nurses and OTs who can do so are more likely to seek better paid employment in the NHS.

A report recently commissioned by Community Integrated Care shows that many front-line workers in social care are financially “significantly undervalued” by as much as 39%—nearly £7,000 a year—compared to equivalent publicly funded positions. Social care struggles to match pay conditions available within the health sector, including pensions, annual leave entitlements and sick pay. That means that, when faced with the choice of working in either sector, individuals are more likely choose to work in health, if they can. We must help foster a culture of collaboration between the NHS and social care.

Skills for Care estimates that the adult social care workforce in England employs over 1.5 million people, yet there remains a major recruitment and retention crisis which, without intervention, is only likely to get worse. Currently, there are over 100,000 vacancies—that is around 6.8%—with projections estimating that nearly 500,000 new jobs will be needed to meet demand within social care by 2035. The turnover rate of staff is estimated to be over 30%, and higher still among those on zero-hour contracts.

Pay is not a panacea for addressing this issue. Much of it comes down to better wages being offered in other sectors which are able to use market forces to drive up employee pay. Furthermore, if terms and conditions are more closely aligned between social care and the NHS, staff may be able to move more easily between sectors, providing the continuity of care for their patients in the community, which is so valued by so many people.

Social care has been defined as a low-paying industry by the Low Pay Commission every year since the first report of the Low Pay Commission on the national minimum wage in 1998. The average pay for support workers in England who assist people to live independently in the community is £17,695, or £9.05 per hour, which is 45p per hour below the real living wage—that is the average. It seems nonsensical for a single system to have staff working at similar levels but some being paid significantly less than others. The Government have previously argued that, because of the existence of private providers in the care market, they cannot mandate a level of pay for care staff. But this just does not hold up to scrutiny: providers are paid an hourly rate for the contracts they are given by the local authority. This means that there is a conduit through which a fair rate for providers, and by extension employees, could be set.

The continued insistence that an increase in the national living wage is suitable remuneration for care staff does not reflect the level of skill and dedication that they display. While this may reduce the barrier to entering the adult social care workforce, we are still left with problems retaining what will go on to become a much more experienced workforce. There is very little incentive to stay in terms of pay promotion, and the experience pay gap has reduced even more, to something like 1% per hour in the past year. We must address this issue to support this workforce, now and for the future.

Higher pay and lower vacancy rates have been associated with more favourable outcomes during inspections by the Care Quality Commission, which is not surprising. Put simply, a stronger and more valued workforce improves patient care and retention. The demand for the skills of the workforce, now and for the future, means that ensuring parity of pay and conditions between the health and social care sectors is of paramount importance in the care, rehabilitation and protection of people who need this support.

I thank Mencap for a very good brief, Skills for Care for excellent statistics, and my noble friend Lady Finlay for supporting my amendment. I hope that the Minister will see its value.

Elderly Social Care (Insurance) Bill [HL]

Baroness Verma Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for bringing this Bill to your Lordships’ House. It is an important Bill. I want to refer to my interest in the register as an adult social care provider for 21 years. Knowing the sector rather better than some of your Lordships, I would like to dismiss a few myths but also include some of the things that we should have addressed, not just today but many decades ago.

A crisis in social care is not a crisis of the last five or 10 years; it has been an ongoing crisis for a very long time. It is also important to note—and I address this directly to the noble Lord, Lord Hendy—that some of our providers are small businesses. Mine is a small business, and 75% of the people who work in my organisation have been with me for at least 15 years or more. So it is about the way we treat our care staff.

The fact we have been unable to professionalise and make people see it as a profession, by paying with a decent funding stream, is part of the problem. As I have raised on several occasions in your Lordships’ House, if we are to make sure the NHS is not overwhelmed, a serious look at social care, which actually prevents many people going to the NHS, will be a necessary and honest discussion. We know we need to protect the NHS, but we need to protect the social care sector as well. We are all living longer, but whether we are living healthier and longer is a different argument. As we all know, burdens on the NHS increase as we live longer.

We have never had an honest debate about the NHS and social care, side by side, and we need to have one. They are two sides of the same coin. While we can discuss lots of alternatives, it is important that this debate, yet again, enables us to look at alternative solutions. Ultimately, it is the duty of us all to ensure that, at whatever age we need support, it is available and we are not discriminated against simply because our illness or need is not recognised for NHS cover. I hope that, when the Government bring forward their Bill, we have a strong and robust discussion on social care needs.

Covid-19 Update

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the bus industry. Many noble Lords will remember those terrible stories at the beginning of the pandemic about bus drivers having an extremely high incidence of severe disease and even death. But the noble Lord should have hope as there is a really good reason why the buses will one day be full, and that is the vaccine. The vaccine gives us all hope that the kind of life we once had can be revisited, although we have to take some time to ensure that the vaccines are working as well as they should. We have to ensure that booster shots, if needed, are delivered. We have to ensure that the vaccine cuts through to all communities and that hygiene—the social distancing, handwashing and other personal hygiene disciplines which are going to be a long-term commitment by the entire nation—is truly imbedded in everyone’s habits.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for the Statement repeat and congratulate him on the work he has been doing over the last many months. Does he agree that the public health messaging, which has been very good in all communities, should continue because we are going to get many other forms of variant? As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, says, this is going to be an ongoing issue, probably for a number of years, and continuous messaging will be key. Will he also tell me, given the recent new variant, what conversations he is having with counterparts from the countries concerned to see how that variant is reacting, what is happening there and whether it is reproducing rapidly or slowly, so that better informed decisions can be made in our own country?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for her insight. She is entirely right; this awful pandemic does have a silver lining, which is that it can be an inflection point for a complete transformation in our public health messaging. The work we are doing on communicating the threat of the variants is one example of that. The next front line will be the flu jab rollout in the autumn, where take-up rates have been okay but not great. I hope that, when the flu jab campaign begins this autumn, a completely different generation and spread of people will step up to that opportunity. We are working extremely hard to use the public mood and sentiment behind preventive medicine to full effect to ensure that the flu jab works, that therefore a much smaller proportion of the population will transmit flu, and that deaths and severe disease from flu will be reduced. That can be the legacy of this awful pandemic.

Covid-19: Update

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My noble friend is entirely right: life sciences is a huge national strength. It was a quiet industry that people did not speak of much; now it is centre stage. Post Brexit, the role of the MHRA, as one of the world’s leading regulators, is something of which we can be enormously proud as a country. It is also making a lot of businesses think that the UK should very much be the focus of their investment, going forward. BEIS and the DHSC are working together very closely, through the Office for Life Sciences, to ensure that the message is heard loud and clear, around the world, that Britain is the right place to invest.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister tell me what plans are in place to monitor the work being done to ensure that cities such as Leicester, which was in the longest lockdown ever, do not go backwards now that people are being vaccinated? How will they monitor that? Could my noble friend also tell me what is being done to encourage people into the social care sector? There is an enormous demand for care workers, and yet we do not seem able to fill those gaps.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My noble friend is right: the people of Leicester have done a terrific job at getting the rate down. It was once 571 per 100,000, and on 15 April it was 74 per 100,000. This is a huge achievement, but I am afraid that behind that lie some concerns. Nationally, we are at 26 per 100,000, but 23 local authorities have cases above 50, and Leicester is one of them. In some areas of the country, the virus is proving extremely resilient. That is partly due to the deprivation referred to by the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and partly due to the cultural and practical habits of those involved. We are working really hard to try to address those knotty problems, and I welcome the civic engagement of all who live there.

Covid-19 Update

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

I am enormously grateful for the work that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the National Mental Capacity Forum have done during the pandemic. The issue of mental capacity and consent has been addressed in official guidance that the NHS and others have issued to medical professionals who will administer the Covid vaccine in care homes. I understand that officials at the DHSE and the MoJ are supporting the forum with the webinar planned for this Friday, and I am absolutely delighted to reaffirm the Government’s support for the forum’s work on these important areas.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

Will my noble friend do a communications strategy or campaign to debunk the idea that the vaccines have animal content? There are messages going around on social media that would stop people from minority communities, in particular, from having the vaccine if it did have animal content.

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

I thank my noble friend for providing this opportunity to scotch that unhelpful rumour. I confirm that there are absolutely no animal components in the vaccine. That point has been endorsed by the British Islamic Medical Association, members of which issued a fatwa earlier this year confirming that the vaccine was halal. My noble friend is right that there are stories on social media that are extremely distracting. We engage with sympathy with those who are concerned about the vaccine, but these stories are completely wrong, and I would like to put them to bed.