My Lords, we are very sympathetic to what the noble Baronesses, Lady Barker and Lady Tyler, and my noble friend Lady Bakewell want to achieve through the amendment in promoting the well-being, dignity, rights and welfare of older people. My noble friend Lady Bakewell, in particular, has campaigned long and hard for an older person’s commissioner and, as the Voice of Older People under the Labour Government, speaks first-hand about the job that needs to be done in government to join up policies on health, social care, housing, transport, welfare, work and pensions to address the economic and social challenges presented by an ageing society.
The importance of a cross-government overview and strategy on older people is why Labour has a shadow Cabinet Minister for Care and Older People. Liz Kendall has a vital role in ensuring joined-up policies across the range of services that must be changed and adapted to meet older people’s growing and changing needs. The importance of developing a coherent strategy and vision for our old age was recently underlined by the excellent report of the Select Committee on Public Services and Demographic Change, referred to by the noble Baronesses, Lady Barker and Lady Tyler. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is entirely right to say that in Ready for Ageing? the committee described the UK and its society as being “woefully underprepared”. It pointed out that the implications of an ageing society had not been assessed holistically and that it had been left to government departments,
“who have looked, in varying degrees, at the implications for their own policies and costs”.
The committee called on the Government to look at ageing from the point of view of the public and to consider how,
“policies may need to change to equip people better to address longer lives”.
When we consider that important report tomorrow, the role of an older person’s commissioner in helping to face the future and meet the challenges so graphically set out by the committee and today will be a key part of that debate
A considerable amount of work and thought has gone into the drafting of Amendment 139, but the main emphasis seems to be on rights and redress, rather than the all encompassing and unique role envisaged by my noble friend Lady Bakewell in her Second Reading speech and earlier today. That would give the commissioner effective access to planning across different government departments.
We would prefer that broad approach, and, of course, we also need to learn from the experience of the older person’s commissioners in Wales and Northern Ireland. We understand that the advocacy role has worked particularly well in Wales in promoting the rights and interests of older people and challenging discrimination.
Inevitably, costs are an important consideration. The older person’s commissioner’s salary, operational support and accountability costs would be significant. I would be interested to learn from the noble Earl whether the Government have undertaken any costing and impact work on that, as promised to my noble friend when she first raised this issue, as she said, under the Health and Social Care Bill.