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Care Services: Older Adults and Disabled People

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Fookes. I am always amazed by the marvellous speeches she makes without even a note in front of her, none better than today’s on this important subject. I am pleased that we are debating this subject, but it is tremendously wide. We have heard about so many aspects of it already and I am sure that more will follow. The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, commented on dementia, which has to be very high on the list of priorities, because it is a living bereavement. Some people who have advanced dementia respond better to a formal, official, regimented type of care than to their own relatives, whom they no longer recognise. There is a Member of this House whose husband was having such care. When he was brought home, he said that he wanted to go home, by which he meant the care home in which he had been. That of course was very upsetting for her. The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, who cannot be here today and who has done so much for disabled people, has asked me to raise the need for disabled people to have adequate help with fuel because, being unable to move, they feel the cold much more than anyone else. That applies also to people who are unable to move due to illness. The noble Baroness also thinks that there should be free prescriptions for the long-term disabled and says that it is most unusual that some people get them and others do not. She asked me to raise that point. Volunteers can play a great role in shopping, helping in the garden or painting your front door. They can play a very big part and help people who are still living in their own home but can no longer manage these tasks. We want to see encouragement, particularly at this time when a lot of young people have no employment; it would be very good for them to have an occupation. Young people benefit quite a lot from helping older people who are in need. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, commented on the eye-watering squeeze on public money. I am sure that that is true and that we will all be faced with it in the years ahead because of the bank situation. It is funny how life is often bittersweet. I got my peerage in 1981; in the same year, my daughter was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She has done wonders over these years and she has done a lot for other people. We have to realise that some disabled people do help others. In her case—and I suppose I should declare an interest—she is chairman of the trustees of the Gardening for Disabled Trust, which helps people of all ages. It helps many with learning difficulties, too, at any age, along with those who have advancing illness or age or disability. In the last year, it has helped people with chronic back and hip trouble; people who have visual, physical or mental disabilities or problems; people who need to reorganise their garden on grounds of illness or age; and residents in long-stay hospitals or nursing homes who share a garden, as they sometimes do. The charity gave out £31,000 in 2007, in 41 grants averaging about £650. Sarah herself is no longer able to work full-time, but she has to go and have exercise regularly. Multiple sclerosis is one of those conditions where you tend to go downhill. You need to keep your muscles toned up—but they are doing a great deal to help, and there is tremendous research going on. On the subject of research, only last week we had a presentation on glaucoma in the House of Commons, in the Members’ Dining Room. A wonderful professor from Moorfields explained that prevention is the thing, and that it was terribly important that older people have tests every year if they are showing any sort of inclination towards glaucoma. He went on to explain to me later that they are doing research that indicates that they will be able to develop such tissues that the body will be able to repair itself and that blindness might even be reversed in future. That would be a marvellous thing for people. As he explained, the moment you have lost your eyesight, you have lost so much in life—it is one of the most important things. He believes that if the research can solve the problem of how the body can heal itself and reinstate damaged tissue—and that is what he thinks they are working on and can eventually happen—all sorts of conditions that we cannot treat now could be reversible and, instead of people seeing their sight going generally downhill over so many years, they will find that they can reverse it. Another essence of prevention is mobility. Bus passes are really enormously valuable to people. When I was chairman of social services in Westminster we first brought in free bus passes. When Ken Livingstone took over, he added the title "freedom pass" and implied that it was his own invention, when it had been going for many years before that. If we can keep people fit, mobile and interested in life, there is a hope that we can cut back on the enormous and growing demand for care, which at the moment is unfortunately projected by the University of Kent to increase by 95 per cent. Unless we can do more in prevention and reversal, we will have a terrible problem. Let us do what we can to stop that.