---

Women

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, on initiating this important debate. At the same time, I extend my apologies to the Lord President of the Council. I have to leave before the end of the debate due to a prior engagement about which I could do nothing. First, it has taken a long time for the situation of older women to gain some priority alongside younger women. The feminist movement, which did so much, largely forgot older women for many years. Thankfully there are now initiatives, not least some by the Government, which help to ease the situation. However, stark facts about the change in our society affect older women dramatically. For example, in the new stretched family one often has a women, perhaps in her fifties or a little older, looking after one, and sometimes two, generations above her and one, and sometimes two, generations below her. That is a caring role which was completely unthinkable in the not too distant past. The support systems for such care are still somewhat lacking. Secondly, older women suffer far more from chronic disease than younger people, and often than older men. We still have a gap in longevity between men and women. That will continue for some time although the equality gap is narrowing. However, at present one could say, I think with some truth, that a lot of older women live longer in more pain. They are poorer and suffer more. Something has to be done to arrest that shameful situation. Thirdly, I acknowledge that there has been a large input of cash into healthcare. However, there are still areas in which women, in particular older women, suffer through not getting the attention they need and through blatant discrimination. For example, we tend not to recognise that cardiovascular disease affects more women than cancer does. We always tend to focus on men being likely to be sick through cardiovascular disease. It is an area which needs a lot of our attention. Chronic disease is mostly suffered more by women than men. The cash problems suffered by the NHS mean that in the commissioning of healthcare the primary healthcare trusts will concentrate on the more acute needs of people to the detriment of the chronic, lower order care which is needed by many people in the community. That will disproportionately affect women in the community. I hope that the Government will address that worrying trend. I shall not attempt to address the issue of social security. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, will do so admirably. It is a huge problem. I refer to the role of grandparents, in particular grandmothers and other extended kin. They save the nation a fortune by stepping in and taking on often full-time care of their grandchildren—and they may not be blood grandchildren. Most of the people who do this caring job are women. I would even say that they are used by some social services or authorities because they do not get the support they need. Some have to spend a huge amount of money which they do not have or which reduces their income to unacceptable levels. We are talking about children with immense problems. We know that families often split up. Grandparents step in but they are treated terribly unfairly in relation to other carers such as foster carers or adoptive parents because they are family. That is gross discrimination. I should love to speak for a very long time but, in the circumstances, I keep my speech very brief.