Older Persons: Human Rights and Care

Lord Sawyer Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sawyer (Lab)]

My Lords, I also thank my noble friend Lord Foulkes for initiating this extremely important debate. When I reflected on what to say in my five minutes, I intended to talk about something that has not been widely covered: isolation and loneliness among old people. I am going to change tack a little, but it is important that isolation and loneliness are addressed. The impact of being lonely on old people has recently been matched to the effects of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. When talking about comprehensive care for older people, we have to include a proper understanding and examination of the effects of isolation and loneliness.

I am sure all noble Lords will have heard similar stories, but I was told about a GP’s surgery in North Yorkshire, where I spent some time recently, at which a number of regular patients have nothing medically wrong with them. They book weekly appointments with the doctor because they want someone to talk to. I am sure that situation is not unusual, but it is a damn shame that it gets to that.

There is a great example for all of us in the new Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness. If noble Lords have not heard of it, it is well worth taking note of. It works in partnership with charities, supporting older people and carers. It puts a lot of emphasis on chatting, being happy to chat to neighbours, relatives and people in need of company. I think the commission is doing a great job by emphasising the power of talking. It sounds simple, and it is, but it needs to be done.

I want to move on now to join the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, whose speech motivated me to get up and say something quite different from what I intended to say. I thought it was great advocacy of people politicians never talk about: low-paid care workers. It was amazing that it came from the Conservative Benches. Perhaps the noble Lord is on the wrong Benches. How do we know? It was a very good speech and made me realise. Why Unison has not sent the noble Lord a briefing, I do not know, but the noble Lord made me revisit in my mind as I was listening to him the importance of making sure that we pay, train and look after care workers in the way we look after any other professional and do not see them as people at the bottom of the pile who always get attention at the very end when everybody else has had an opportunity to take their share.

When I was a young union official, I used to negotiate for those people. When they were employed by local authorities, as the noble Lord will remember, they were all covered by national agreements. Their pay, conditions and holidays were all covered, and so was their training and development. It was not very good at the time, but it was still covered, and there were still opportunities that were laid down at national level. The thing that changed all that, as we all know but it has to be said again and again, was privatisation. The privatisation of the caring services led to fragmentation of employers, some of whom, to be fair, have been reasonably good at doing the right thing. Others, however, have been pretty lousy at it and have not paid people properly, motivated them or engaged them in what the real job is about. This touches on the point made by my noble friend Lord Cashman, who made another speech that really moved me. How do we expect to get a fair deal for LGBT people when we do not get it in the sector at all? There will always be that problem unless we really address the pay and conditions of people who work in that sector and value them.

I do not think this will happen under a Conservative Government because it is essentially about cash. It is about saying that we respect people and value their work enough to say that, despite all the other pressures on us, we are going to make more resources available to pay them above the minimum wage, which is basically where they are now, and pay enough money to give them proper training and development. It is not going to happen, but I think it is a good test for the next Labour Government who come along. If a Government can do something about this problem, that is a good way of sending a signal that they really want to do something to help the older population and people who need care and attention.