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Elder Abuse

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) on securing this important debate, and on the incredibly effective way in which he has raised issues concerning the dignity, care and protection of older people in a variety of ways while he has been in the House. As the Minister responsible for many of those issues, I genuinely welcome his passion. I also pay tribute to him for his balanced contribution, which recognised that some of the issues are complex, and concern the behaviour of clinicians and regulators. Gently, I say to him that his contribution to the debate is very different from his press release which stated:"““Government fail to act on warnings.””" When politicians complain about spin, and then spin themselves, it is no wonder that the public are sometimes a little sceptical. However, seriously, the hon. Gentleman is passionate about these issues, and not enough hon. Members talk about the needs of older people. I shall reflect on the specific issues that the hon. Gentleman raised. First, the Government have a good record on the regulatory system. Soon after coming into office, we put in place, for the first time, national minimum standards for what is expected from care providers. We introduced a new regulatory system to ensure that providers' performance is monitored robustly, and that has led to a significant rise in standards throughout the country, particularly in residential and nursing care. Of course, there are still homes that do not meet the appropriate standards, so we still have work to do. The Government also introduced the ““No Secrets”” guidance on the protection of vulnerable adults, which was, for the first time, a framework. We asked local agencies in every local community to work together to ensure that, in line with the guidance, we had a much better system of adult protection than we had ever had previously. As the hon. Gentleman said, we made some significant announcements last week about how we want to toughen protection for vulnerable older people. We should reflect on the fact that the changing nature of society makes that a top public policy priority. As people live longer and longer, family members and carers are under pressure to fulfil the responsibilities. Demographic change—the ageing population—is increasingly a challenge for families, communities, Parliament and Government. Last week, we announced a £2 million project in partnership with Comic Relief over three years to consider the risk of abuse faced by older people, specifically in institutionalised settings, but also more generally where older people are not treated with the dignity—that is not quite the same as abuse, but there is a continuum—that they should expect, whether on NHS wards, in residential nursing homes or in domiciliary care services. That prevalence study will take place over the next three years with the support of Action on Elder Abuse, and I should pay tribute to that organisation's tremendous work in highlighting elder abuse. I was fortunate enough to speak at its annual conference on Monday where there was an impressive gathering. Its chief executive, Gary Fitzgerald, does a tremendous job in ensuring that the issue has the profile that it deserves. Action on Elder Abuse also supported the study published last year, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, on the risk to older people of being abused in their own homes behind closed doors, because the other change in society is that an increasing number of older people are choosing to remain in their own homes for as long as possible. The debate about protecting older people tends to be skewed towards residential and nursing homes, but we must keep an eye on the fact that more and more people will be cared for at home. There is a question about domiciliary care agencies, their relationship with carers and so on.