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Carers

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I begin by explaining that I am wearing two hats today. I am speaking as a proud member of the Select Committee, and I am happy to follow my colleagues and their excellent contributions, but I am also speaking on behalf of my party. I have been on the Work and Pensions Committee since I joined the House in 2005. With my first hat on, I would like to say that this is probably the best report that we have done. It is excellent, and its timing could not have been better. The Committee was everything that a Select Committee should be—unified, strong and bold—and, as well as looking at some of the failures of the past, it suggested positive ways forward to the Government. I thank my colleagues for working together. I am sure that everyone on the Committee would agree that we work together extremely well, and we also get on very well, I am glad to say. We all take the roles of a Select Committee—scrutinising and coming up with positive proposals—very seriously indeed, and we would all want to thank our excellent staff, who do so much to enable that. The only problem I may have today, Sir John, is referring to my Select Committee colleagues by their first name, which we always do. I ask you to forgive me if I make any mistakes. I am not entirely sure of the names of all the constituencies, such is our usual informality, but I will do my best. I began by saying that I am wearing two hats today. One thing that we found through our extensive research leading up to this excellent report was that that is exactly the situation that carers find themselves in. They have the difficult job of juggling different roles. Their job of caring is often combined with work, and is sometimes combined with child care or other family responsibilities. Of course, whether they work or not, they still carry the burden of ensuring that sufficient income is coming into the household, whether that be from employment or through pensions or benefits. What I found particularly helpful in our inquiry and our work was going out and speaking to many carers. We wanted to hear their voice, and I found the experience extremely powerful. Since then, like other Members who have mentioned that today, I have been speaking to carers in my constituency. Something that will live with me for a long time is the visit to Harrogate, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney), our Chairman, and during which we heard from carers of all ages. We heard about the challenges for older carers and the situation that they face. Many of them do not see themselves as carers—they are simply caring for their spouse, their loved one. They do not even see that they have a caring role. And then, of course, we had that inspiring meeting with the young carers. We heard from incredible young people who have spent most of—in some cases, almost all—their childhood looking after a parent. We heard about their experiences and how they coped. That, too, has been touched on by other hon. Members. Caring has taken those young people away from the normal, every-day things that children would and should take for granted, if they are able to do so. I found that particularly powerful. Because we were listening to the voices of carers and were driven by the experiences of carers up and down the country, we made proposals that I am proud to associate myself with. The bigger picture, of course, is that we want to move on to changing the position of carers in this country. I am sure that the Minister is listening carefully to everything that we have to say and I know that the Government took the report seriously. As our Chairman said, carers are an incredibly precious resource in our society, which is what we need to consider as we move forward on policy. Carers are individuals who contribute to society. Our Select Committee Chairman gave that extraordinary £87 billion figure as the amount that they save the public purse every year. That is astonishing. To be honest, I cannot imagine such a figure. It is enormous, but, to put it in context, it is more than the annual spend on the entire national health service. I find that hard to take in, but it shows exactly what carers are doing, not just for their family members and loved ones, be they spouses or parents, but for our society and country. It is time that we recognised that. Instead of thinking, ““What benefits can we give them?””, we should ask, ““How do we recognise them and their contribution?”” The simple fact—I do not believe that anyone, including the Minister, would disagree with this—is that in the past we have not adequately recognised the support that carers give to people or their contribution to society. That really has to change. Another thing that we found as part of our inquiry was that we are far behind some other countries. Select Committees can and do look at examples of best practice from all over the world and at the systems of nations that are ahead of us. We are ahead of many nations on many things, and I hope that they are looking to us to see how they can improve things, but we found examples from other countries—I believe most of us on the Committee would say from Western Australia in particular—that are, frankly, miles ahead of what we are doing in relation to not just the money given to carers to recognise their contribution, but signposting and support. Other countries really are a long way ahead. There are examples in this country of where we are doing things very well, such as what we saw in Harrogate.