Health Bill [HL]

My friend the noble Lord, Lord Walton, is as usual highly eloquent but, as it is, we already have a list. The list is here. Many of us would make a particular plea for one specific set of amendments—Amendments 16, 20 and 31—about carers. We make that plea partly because this Government have done so much to ensure that carers are now seen but also because of the particular role that carers play in supporting the health service. I speak as someone who previously might have thought that I know what other members of the public might have done, despite having had elderly parents and all the care that goes on through life. However, recently I became the carer of a cousin with Alzheimer’s in Sheffield, and am trying to find my way through an extraordinary maze of health and social care, by which even my expertise is totally defeated. Carers carrying out those sorts of tasks, with that sort of experience, should be consulted because they have a relevant, direct insight into what works and what does not work. That is particularly the case with some of the things that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, was saying earlier—how social care and health care fit together. Unless we have carers in this list, they may well be seen as ordinary members of the public. I feel very different as an ordinary member of the public who happens to be linked to St Thomas’ Hospital through the LINks programme, because I am a user of St Thomas’ Hospital, from how I feel as a carer trying to find my way through the maze of the services 200 miles away from someone over whom I now have lasting power of attorney, his wife having died and since he has no other immediate relative. I support what the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said about specialist services. I alluded to that briefly early on in these debates, because those services often get forgotten. I declare an interest as the patron and trustee of an organisation called Little Hearts Matter, which deals with children with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and other ““half a heart””- type difficulties. Those specialist services are utterly crucial, not only to the well-being of those children but to their very lives, with the oldest being only 18 and all children before that having died. Unless those specialist services are properly consulted and properly represented, those families will find that they do not have the kind of services in which they can have confidence. They do not want it next door; they want the kind of service that will meet their needs. With all the understanding about lists—and I have views about that—I think that carers are an exception. Somehow we must ensure that specialist services are properly consulted.