I should like to begin by quoting one of the Alzheimer’s Society’s ambassadors, Arlene Phillips. Talking about her father, who had Alzheimer’s, she said:
“I did everything I could to care for my dad when we discovered he had dementia. Unfortunately, the efforts of one person—or even a family—aren’t always enough. It soon became clear to me that while I could keep Dad safe when I was by his side, I couldn’t be there every minute of every day.”
The words of Arlene, and thousands like her, should provide all of us in the House, irrespective of party, with the greatest incentive to act to support those people who are suffering and need care and, crucially, their carers and families, who are the backbone of the social care system in this country.
A society should always be judged by the way in which it looks after the most vulnerable people in its communities, and it is safe to say that, over the years, we have all failed that responsibility. Today is an opportunity for us to acknowledge that, and to point out that, even today, in a modern 21st century developed industrial nation, we are still failing the people who ought to get a great deal more support and care from us than we are currently in a position to give.
The Bill is a small step forward, rather than the giant leap for mankind that I would have liked. One of the central issues is a lack of ambition. We face the biggest social challenge that any of us could possibly see, yet the Bill’s provisions, some of which are well meaning, do not, when taken together, add up to a whole system’s series of changes that result in a basic reconfiguration. The right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell) spoke about that, and I pay tribute to his championing of integration, change, re-engineering and being ambitious. I do not see that in this Bill.
Instead, I see some perverse incentives. If we are talking about the well-being duty and the duty to prevent, reduce and delay somebody’s need for care, how can we say that we are going to support only people with substantial and critical needs? How are we going to engage the system further up the chain, with people who are beginning to suffer, perhaps beginning to have memory problems and beginning to need social care? How are we going to incentivise the system to invest in the new commissioning in clause 5, which talks about diversity and shaping the market? How are we going to get the system to focus on that if all the focus, after £2.85 billion-worth of cuts in social care, is on how we might manage to look after the people with substantial and critical needs? We should be focusing far more upstream in the system.