---

Christmas Adjournment

In these debates, Madam Deputy Speaker, our whole life almost passes in front of us, but I want to concentrate on a serious issue that has come up in my constituency about the care of the residents in the residential homes owned and managed by the company Southern Cross. The story goes back two years when I was approached by relatives of parents who lived in Southern Cross care homes in my constituency and across the London borough of Hillingdon. A range of concerns were raised, including poor standards of care and cleanliness in the homes, lack of staff, lack of management, poor diet and lack of stimulation. I heard anecdotes of elderly people slumped in their chairs while the television was blaring. I heard about lack of respect as well as lack of care, as elderly people were spoken to in a demeaning manner. I heard about hectoring and even a bullying atmosphere was described. Anxieties were expressed at that stage about the physical security of the elderly and about the heavy manhandling of elderly people. I took up individual complaints with the London borough of Hillingdon and the local primary care trust, but the frequency of the complaints worried me. In June 2006, I wrote to the then chief executive of the Hillingdon Primary Care Trust to arrange a meeting with relatives to discuss the standards of care. We sat down and went through the issues together. I attended local meetings of the carers association and the Alzheimer's Society and listened to similar concerns. We were informed at the PCT meeting that our views would be listened to and fed back to the local council as well as the PCT itself. Despite that, I continued to receive in subsequent months individual complaints and expressions of concern about standards of care. I thus wrote to the director of social services at Hillingdon and to the chief executive of the Commission for Social Care Inspection. I enclosed a copy of a constituent's letter that outlined examples of the concerns. As I have said, I was still contacted too frequently by relatives of elderly people who express their concerns and I said at that stage that I was extremely worried that these people were vulnerable. I asked for the director's views on the standards of care, I told the commissioner that I was extremely worried and I suggested to the director of social services that we should have an independent review. I welcomed the commission's involvement and offered to meet Hillingdon council and the commission. I received no response from the London borough of Hillingdon, but I liaised with the commission to set up a meeting at the House of Commons at which relatives and representatives of the carers association could explain their concerns. We were told at that meeting that the Commission for Social Care Inspection would be inspecting Hillingdon in 2008 and that there would be an attempt to bring the inspection forward. At that stage at least, I thought that we were making some progress. I was relieved that we had at least engaged. The CSCI inspection took place in early 2008 and its report was published in March. It concluded:"““The London borough of Hillingdon's performance in safeguarding adults was poor…Quality assurance processes in relation to adult safeguarding were underdeveloped and there were some key weaknesses… Safeguarding recording practice was generally poor””—" and it continued like that. Although the report is clearly damning on the issue of safeguarding the elderly, others as well as me found it fairly superficial. It offered a weak approach and it lacked a follow-through. The commission was too willing to accept excuses, unwilling to follow through improvements and unwilling to confront providers themselves with their weaknesses. Nevertheless, I thought that we were moving on again and were on the right path to raising standards. Six to nine months later, regrettably, constituents' complaints keep coming. The examples are just the same as before: lack of physical care, lack of nutrition and so forth. One person's father was losing weight yet the home did not even have the scales to measure it. Because of the lack of consistent improvement, I approached one of the local councillors, Councillor John Major, who has been assiduous in raising these issues. He approached the leader of the council. We suggested an informal meeting with relatives, the carers association and Age Concern to have a chat to ensure that the leader of the council understood the concerns. The leader of the council is the council's champion for the elderly. Unfortunately, he declined the meeting. I received a note from Councillor Major saying that the leader was discussing the matter with a fellow cabinet member. It appears that the meeting proposed as a way forward was not the way in which they wanted to deal with the situation. I was disappointed by that response. Having got nowhere in securing redress through the leader of the council, three weeks ago I met the chief executive of the Hillingdon Primary Care Trust with my neighbour, the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), and I raised the concerns at that meeting. In contrast to the council, the PCT provided me with a detailed briefing note on what was happening in the individual homes. We were informed at that point that all admissions to the homes had been suspended. As a result of one serious incident on 30 October, the police were called in. I will not mention individual homes because I do not want to worry my constituents any further, but in each of the homes at some stage admissions seem to have been halted by Hillingdon because of various concerns about the standards of care. There had been a litany of complaints throughout the year which had to be investigated, and when they had been investigated, further complaints arose. In one instance there were allegations that notices had been put up warning staff not to whistleblow to the Commission for Social Care Inspection. There seems to be a typical pattern of behaviour. When a complaint is made, the company reacts by putting in a manager from another home. Intensive efforts are made to improve the standard of care. The improvements last a few months and the manager is pulled out. At the same time, the home where the manager worked previously deteriorates. The cycle has been going on year after year. While I was being briefed by the primary care trust, local Councillors Anthony Way and John Major insisted on a briefing from council officers. That reiterated exactly the same complaints—lack of staff, lack of training, lack of record keeping, lack of respect for the elderly, health care issues and lack of communication throughout. The question for me is why the situation of continuous complaints has been allowed to happen, with the evident risk to elderly people. One reason, I have discovered, is that the council did not have the staff in place to commission and monitor the contracts awarded to Southern Cross. I have had sight of a letter from a council officer that confirms that there should have been five staff in place. Last year there was only one. The council recruited four staff, but two of those took redundancy, so there are only two members of staff. The council did not have the staff to monitor the contracts, find out what was going on, decide on appropriate action and take that action. A second reason is that the council let the contract for residential care for the elderly on such a scale to Southern Cross over a 10-year period that Southern Cross has a virtual monopoly in Hillingdon. The council closed down its own homes and has very little alternative accommodation in the private sector, so Southern Cross has the council over a barrel. Southern Cross has become one of the largest providers of care for the elderly in the country. It is ruthless in the pursuit of profits. To gain a market share, I believe it has introduced loss leaders and maximised its profits by cutting staff, cutting wages and failing to invest in the basic services of those establishments. I read a recent report in The Times on Southern Cross standards, which was informed by numerous comments by employees and former employees confirming the report's headline, ““filth and abuse in care home.”” Earlier this year the company was on the point of financial collapse and I believe it made even more cuts in its service delivery. I pay tribute to the hard-working staff in those homes. They are underpaid and lacking in managerial support, yet they do their best in that environment. There is a third reason why the scandal has been allowed to persist for so long. It is the one that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) mentioned: for too long, the needs of the elderly in our society have been ignored. They are swept to one side. The elderly do not count as much as others in our society. That must end. One small way in which we could demonstrate that they do count is by tackling Southern Cross in our local area, the London borough of Hillingdon, and nationally. I wrote 10 days ago to the Secretary of State for Health asking for Ministers to intervene as a matter of urgency in Southern Cross in the London borough of Hillingdon. I also think there is a need for a wider review of the way in which we treat and care for the elderly, however, particularly in the privatised sector. We cannot sit back and let elderly people be put at risk in this way. There has been case after case in my constituency of what I consider to be severe neglect, and as I said, the police have been called to one home to investigate the physical abuse of an elderly person by the staff. Members have mentioned the case of baby P, which has caused distress to the nation as well as throughout the House. I give this warning: unless we take decisive action fast on the care of the elderly and elderly care standards, we shall inevitably be faced with a granny P or a granddad P. It is coming; indeed, it may well have happened in our own area as a result of the activities of Southern Cross as a poor provider of residential care for the elderly. I urge my hon. Friend the Leader of the House to go to the Secretary of State for Health and say that this is an urgent matter that needs to be addressed locally and nationally.