Section:GDN 1N PaGe:30 Edition Date:190731 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 29/7/2019 18:06 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Wednesday 31 July 2019
30
SocietyInterview: Lord Forsyth
‘Private insurance won’t
fi x the social care crisis’
Patrick ButlerM
ichael Forsyth,
chair of the House
of Lords economic
committee, is in
buoyant mood,
happily surprised
by the positive response to the
committee’s recent, pugnacious
report into social care funding. “I
was astonished by the reaction,
actually,” says the Conservative
peer. Congratulations came from
across parliament; and there were
supportive emails from the public.
They liked not just its bold call for
a multi billion-pound, taxpayer-
funded, NHS-style overhaul of adult
social care , but its brisk frustration
with the political failure of successive
governments to address what it
concluded was a “national scandal”.
The committee’s solution was
admirably simple: write an £8bn
cheque to local authorities in
England and Wales to pull adult
social care budgets back to pre-
austerity 2010 levels; and create by
2025 a £7bn a year system of free
personal care to help people with
daily tasks such as bathing and meal
preparation. Importantly, the cash
would be distributed via a central
grant, removing postcode lotteries.
Above all, robust action was needed,
and quickly: as Lord Forsyth said at
the launch of the report earlier this
month: “Let’s stop faffi ng around.”
Any initial concerns the peers had
that their demands for an extra £15bn
a year by 2025 were unrealistic were
quickly drowned out by copious
evidence of a broken system, he says.
A bout 1.4 million people are denied
the social care they need because of
cuts, rationing and means tests. The
system is riddled with unfairnessand inequality, and the gap between
demand and resources is growing
apace. People are suff ering. “You
would have to be blind and totally
excluded from society not to be
able to read or see that the system
is failing. We all know the system is
failing,” he says.
Equally, some will have been
surprised by the enthusiasm with
which Forsyth – a former minister
in John Major’s government –
embraced this most statist of
solutions. Forsyth less so. “I’m
regarded as a right winger, as a
Thatcherite, ” he admits. “I believe
in politics that the fi rst duty of
parliament is the defence of the
nation but also to ensure, as Winston
Churchill put it, to provide a net and
a ladder; a net below which people
do not fall and a ladder to help them
get out of the net. Here you have
people who can’t climb ladders and
the net is full of holes.”
S ocial insurance solutions
were quickly dispatched , after
the insurance industry told the
committee they wouldn’t work. They
were just a diversion from the reality
that a properly functioning social
care system is the expensive duty
of the taxpayer , says Forsyth. “The
people who are looking for some
easy way out of this are in search of a
holy grail which does not exist.”
If confi rmation were needed that
the system was crumbling, it came
in the private testimony by care
workers, he says. He was struck by
their dedication despite low pay, low
status, the lack of a career structure,
and the dearth of support. You
can’t blame employers for this, he
says, “trying to squeeze a pint into
a half-pint pot”. “They [the carers]
know that people are denied care
not because the local authorities
or anyone wants to be beastly but
simply because they are having to
ration resources .”
The committee set out to create
a blueprint that was acceptable to
both Labour and the Tories.
Several days after our interview,
Boris Johnson promised in his fi rst
utterances as prime minister to “ fi x
the crisis in social care”. There has
been speculation that his plan may
adopt an insurance-style approach.
Forsyth said Johnson should take
note of the committee’s emphasis
on funding the social care needs
of working-age adults, and the
importance of paying for it through
taxation, warning: “Any plan which
relies mainly on private insurance
will not work, even with a pensions-
style auto-enrolment scheme.”
By convention the government
must formally respond to the
committee within eight weeks.
Brexit or no Brexit, there is simply
no time to waste, Forsyth says. If the
government is serious about social
care reform it cannot possibly avoid
the committee ’s conclusions. “This
is a broken system, we are reaching
the end of the road.”Summer camps for all
No mobiles, no selfi es: just
the chance to be children
Hazel DavisI
’m in an activity centre near
the Worcestershire town of
Bewdley, watching a game
of “giants and pixies” and
picking dried banana out of
my hair after a “spa session”
this morning, where I was treated
to a hand massage and a homemade
face mask. This is not your average
children’s camp. Nobody is abseiling
or caving and there has only been
one woodcraft session so far.
“Shall we go to the den and
play werewolves?” shouts Gabe,a n assistant with a broad grin,
described by 11-year-old Alistair as
“the very best camp monitor we
could have got”.
The camp is run by Active
Training and Education Trust
(ATE), a not-for-profi t organisation
established in 1996, which provides
residential holidays – known as
“ superweeks” – to school-age
children throughout England.
About 400 children a year attend
superweeks at six centres in
Shropshire, Worcestershire, Stroud
and Derbyshire.
Alistair is here because his
school nominated him as someone
who might benefi t from a seven-
day residential. ATE works with
schools and special educational
needs coordinator teachers to target
children they know will benefi t
from the experience. His place was
subsidised by ATE, with his parents
and school footing a nominal £35 fee.Alistair says, “It’s a really good way
to make new friends and try new
things. I just love it.”
ATE’s programmes director, Liz
Macartney, says the nominal fee is
important. “It ensures they turn up
but is small enough so that many
people can aff ord it,” she explains.
Non-subsidised places cost £450
a week, including travel from 17
towns and cities either by coach or
train. “We know that £450 is not
money you fi nd down the back of
the sofa but at the same time it’s
comparable with childcare costs,”
says Macartney.
In 2009, the organisation
launched an “adventure appeal” to
subsidise low-income families , who
make up a third of the programme’s
attendees. Since then, as many as
974 children (including this year’s
cohort) have benefi t ed from the
appeal, which has raised more than
£360,000. ATE also runs a scheme,A week away from life’s
pressures boosts young
people’s wellbeing and
confi dence – for just £35▲ Lord Forsyth: ‘I’m regarded as a
rightwinger, as a Thatcherite’Tory chair of the Lords
economic committee
warns only taxes can
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