My Lords, I strongly support all the amendments in this group. The noble Lord, Lord Young, has been so persuasive and I endorse
what he said about young carers. As someone who has been involved with carers for almost as long as the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley—I now regard her as my general in these matters—I want to focus on Amendment 221, to which I have added my name.
It is worth remembering that this Bill is being considered in the context of adult social care funding having been starved, in my view, by three successive Governments. Even when huge sums of money are being raised for health and care through a national insurance levy, social care has to wait its turn. A bit like Oliver Twist, it is at the end of the queue—hopefully there will be some money left in the coffers after the NHS has removed a substantial part of it. That context is very important.
In that context, I find it surprising that somebody somewhere in the Department of Health and Social Care thinks it is a good idea, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, said, to weaken the protections for carers. It is worth bearing in mind that one in five carers now waits over six months for an assessment. In a survey from last November, only 24% of carers had received a carers’ assessment or reassessment in the past year. This is the context in which officialdom and Ministers have thought it a good idea to weaken the protections provided in the 2003 Act. There may have been some weaknesses in that Act, but this was not one of them, as it provided for the NHS to undertake these assessments before people were withdrawn. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, is not in his place, but he was the person who took that Bill through and achieved support for that protection for carers.
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I cannot understand how this got through the sifting systems when Minister after Minister has stood at this Dispatch Box and sworn undying fealty to the needs of carers. We are seeing stuff stuffed into this Bill which damages the position of carers by removing the protections that were there for them. Let us not mince our words: what the Bill does in practice is shove the problem of dealing with the discharged person on to an unpaid carer, without any protections as to whether they can cope in the situation in which they find themselves. I regard that as pretty intolerable in this day and age and think we would do well to say to the Minister that we need to support these amendments, particularly Amendments 221 and 225. If the Minister is not willing to go down that path, I hope noble Lords will move them to a vote on Report.