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Carers

The straight answer is no, it is not. I want to come on to that point, but I also want to talk about employment and training. If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will come back to it. On information and advice, one of the startling things that came out in our inquiry was the relative paucity of advice for carers. Most carers take a long time—sometimes years—to recognise themselves as carers. Sadly, just a couple of weeks before Christmas, my wife broke her leg, and for about six weeks I was a carer. I was not a very good one and I was not a full-time one—I am glad she is not here—but it did get me thinking about all the different situations that I have had in my own life when I have been a carer. People think that that is their duty, and let us not forget that it is largely women who do this work. People take on the role without any knowledge, advice or information coming to them about what is available for carers, however meagre that might be. The Committee visited the carers' centre in Harrogate run by the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. It has a number of centres around the country; I forget exactly how many. It may not be the only way to do it, but that centre was an outstanding example of a one-stop shop where people could obtain all the information that they could possibly need on all aspects of caring and what was available. How many carers have no idea about their entitlement to respite care? Such care is a lifeline for carers. It enables them to take a weekend off without feeling guilty. Lots of money is being put into respite care and lots of social services departments have got pots of money, as have some primary care trusts, but it is not advertised and carers are left unaware of it. We need to do much better on the provision of information and advice. We recommended a network of centres, perhaps on the model employed by the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, although we are not too fussy; if a different model works, let us use that. ““Putting People First””, which I think is a Department for Communities and Local Government publication, committed local and national Government to making significant progress by 2011 to ensure that all areas have both carer support and a"““universal information, advice and advocacy service for people needing services…irrespective of their eligibility for public funding.””" That is fine in so far as it goes, but there is no penalty on local government and local health services if they do not provide it. I know that there is a great argument about centralisation, devolution and whether things are ring-fenced or not, but I do not know any arm of local or central Government that disagrees that those services need to be provided, so why not have a mechanism to ensure that that is happening? A separate issue is that social care and health are devolved in Scotland, but there is a UK benefits system. There is a tension in that respect which no one seems to have resolved. There are issues about devolved education as well, in relation to young carers. The system in Scotland is different from that in England, but a universal benefits system is laid on top of that. I know that, generally, there are cordial relations between central Government and the devolved Administrations, but at the end of the day the devolved Administrations can say, ““Go away. We're not doing it.”” There is universal carer's allowance, with all the conditions attached to it, but in different parts of the UK the support networks behind it have different rules and regulations. That was not properly addressed in the Government response to our report. I hope that we will hear more about it today. My final point concerns employment and training issues for carers. On average, carers act as carers for eight years. Most carers are in the 35 to 55 age group—what one might call the prime earning years. Either they come out of the job market entirely or they work part time but have to forgo promotion and advancement and turn down training opportunities. That is a major impediment to their earning power at the time, but it also translates to poverty in retirement, because at the peak earning time when normally people would start putting extra money into pensions and so on, their employment ability is reduced and their capacity for income is reduced Let us not forget that 250,000 carers are retired. We heard one case of a widow of 71 who was a carer for her mother, who was 90-odd, and 51-year-old twin sons, who were severely disabled. She receives the carer's credit attached to her pension credit—£27 a week. Had she been a bit younger, she would have received only the single £50 a week carer's allowance. It will be increasingly common for people in retirement to be caring for adult children as well as parents. However, we do not seem to have recognised that, in the circumstances that I have described, carers' incomes are significantly reduced and their employment opportunities are reduced. Some of the rules and regulations that relate to education and training were designed for a different era and a different cohort of claimants, and they positively work against carers. Professor Paul Gregg got it absolutely right in his review, which he delivered just before Christmas. He came up with the concept of a progression to work group. That refers to people who at some future point will want to work but currently are not required to look for work or be subject to the normal JSA conditions. A channel of communication is needed so that we can say to carers, ““You can opt in if you want to. These are the options and opportunities that are available, but it is not mandatory.”” We need a line of communication if we are to bridge that gap. The gap is an average of eight years, with people not being in employment and missing training and other opportunities as a result. We need to find other ways of telling them about what is available. We also need to look seriously at the restrictions of the benefit system on those in training. I am not talking about the universal abolition of the 16-hour rule or the 21-hour rule. It is a clearly identified group for which we can write a special prescription. We do it often enough, but we need to use a bit more imagination. As I said, the exclusion of those on income support from claiming jobseeker's allowance is a distinct group. The carer's time has come. It is not good enough to keep the debate going. Carers have been consulted to death. We do not need any more consultation. The message is clear; the prescription is clear. The only reason why there has not been more progress is that it is a silent group. There is no trade union marching for the carers. There is no army of fancy lawyers—I apologise to hon. Members for mentioning this—seeking fee income from representing them. Carers sit and suffer in silence. Regrettably, groups that sit and suffer in silence tend to be ignored by the Government. I think back a couple of years and 100,000 people losing their pensions when their companies went into administration. It took a while, but in the end the Government came up with a package worth £8 billion. That was to satisfy 100,000 people. Last year, the ombudsman's report into Equitable Life was finally published. The Government responded, and at some point a package will be put together to compensate those affected. Why? It was because, over the years, they made a lot of noise. Let every Member of the House—all 651 of us—act as champions and be the voice for the carers. It has gone on for long enough. It is time that they were rewarded and recognised for their immense contribution. Last August, we were all thrilled by the British success at the Olympics. We had 19 gold medallists. They were praised as heroes and were recognised in the New Year's honours list. In the carers, we have 4.5 million heroes. They need to be recognised today.