I want to write to Baroness Greengross
Did you mean alleged speaker:Baroness Greengross?
Baroness Greengross: ...property: the UN estimates that 40% of nations do not treat men and women equally. We know that widows can fall victim to detrimental cultural practices, extending to forcible remarriage, rape and allegations of witchcraft. More recently, WPD has been campaigning on the neglected plight of the uncounted millions of half-widows—the wives of the forcibly disappeared or missing, as the...
Baroness Greengross: ...on the rather hidden abuse of people in the community. Unfortunately, as we learnt from the Health and Social Care Information Centre, in just one year—2013—there was a 4% rise in cases of alleged abuse referred for investigation. Sadly, the hidden abuse is very likely not to be referred at all. I have been involved in this issue for many years and helped to establish Action on Elder...
Baroness Greengross: ...close to the person—that is, family, carers and friends living in the same household, because the majority of abuse happens in people’s homes. We have seen a 4% rise in the number of cases of alleged abuse referred for investigation in the past year. I urge the Government to do more to protect vulnerable adults. It is a serious issue and, in my view, the danger might unwittingly be...
Baroness Greengross: ..., we must also educate the general public that it is as unacceptable as child abuse, and seek to give its eradication as high a profile as that very worthy cause gets in the media. If even cases of alleged unlawful killing can go unpunished, is there any hope that we can deal with less serious but more common cases of elder abuse unless we tackle the matter? For example, a 78 year-old...
Baroness Greengross: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. I am pleased that the Government are keeping these issues under review. Does the noble Lord agree that alleged health grounds can be a cause for getting rid of people as a form of not-very-well-disguised age discrimination; and that the situation may become worse when the age for women to retire equals that of men in 2010?