Carers: Support

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the testimony from the right reverend Prelate is entirely right and is echoed in the Carers UK report. The point he makes about identification is key. One of the good things that came out of the pandemic is that we made progress on identifying and putting together registers of carers. That was seen in the delivery of the vaccination, when nearly 1.6 million of them received the vaccination early as part of priority group 6. I agree with the right reverend Prelate that more needs to be done on data collection.

[Baroness Altmann (Con) [V]]

My Lords, will my noble friend join me in commending the work of unpaid carers in this country who have done so much to help through the pandemic? Will he request that Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions consider increasing the carer’s allowance, which pays anyone caring for somebody less than £2 an hour for at least 35 hours a week of care? The complexity of the current system, with overlapping benefits, would certainly be advantaged by significant simplification. At the moment, people need advice before they understand whether they can claim carers benefit.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I completely agree with my noble friend on commending the role of unpaid carers. We could not have got through this pandemic in the way we did without them. The system is complex and work is under way at the DWP to try to simplify it. As my noble friend knows from her significant expertise, this is a difficult task but we are very focused on it.