Clause 3
Pensions Bill
4:15 pm
Sally Keeble (Northampton North, Labour)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Taylor.
I tabled amendment No. 61 after discussions with carers groups to find a way to balance the different pressures on caring and pensions. It is important to recognise that many carers will benefit from other changes in the Bill—in particular, the reduction in the number of hours that have to be worked per week to qualify for the state pension. If they do not have to work for so many hours, it is easier for people with substantial caring responsibilities to qualify for a state pension. That has to be recognised.
It is obviously important that the system should properly compensate carers and recognise the contribution that they make. Some carers are not able to work because of their caring responsibilities, so they cannot qualify even on the fewer-hours basis. They therefore need credits to count towards their pensions.
We should not muddle that up with the caring roles that people normally play for their families. We have to draw the lines carefully. Otherwise, everybody will end up being a carer and what we are trying to do will become virtually meaningless. We have to be clear about that.
The credits are valuable; they are not light things. They are important, and there has to be a proper process for deciding who qualifies and who does not. Tagging on a long list of benefits means that people can tick a box and get a benefit, but that does not always meet the realities of carers’ lives. That is why, in addition to the specified benefits, which I agree are probably not wide enough, we need a process that allows for the person who cannot tick the boxes, but who none the less does what amounts to a caring job. That person cannot qualify even at the fewer-hours rate because of their caring responsibilities. We need to find another way to recognise and assess what is going on.
The Opposition said that that should be done by one health or social services professional, but I do not think that that would be robust enough. To give an example from the Home Office, the domestic violence exemption system, in which two professionals sign, works well. That is sensible; there is evidence from two sources. In the case that we are discussing we could say that a doctor and social worker should sign. However, one person with a lot going on in their lives—caring, working, this, that and the other—would have to run around collecting bits of paper from different professionals. Furthermore, there would be the issue of what would happen if the doctors decided to charge. That is a problem because there is no agreement in place with doctors yet.
All of us have seen the letters that professionals write in support of housing applications, but a person advocating a patient or client is not always in a position to make an impartial judgment, one that follows due process or a set of criteria. They are more likely simply to say, “This person works very hard. They look after three children, who all have difficulties. Yes, they qualify as a carer.” An established process for such applications might provide a way forward. Amendment No. 61 would place a responsibility on the social services authority to undertake the process, rather than with an individual social worker whom people may not know. A social services authority in any event has a responsibility for undertaking care assessments for the different client groups; it will have family records, so the process would look at the care needs of the people concerned. The authority could say whether the mother looking after three children is indeed working as a carer as stipulated in the Bill, and that she should therefore be entitled to the carers credit.