Contribution
In December last year, I met one of my constituents, Julian, whose wife has cared for their daughter since birth. Their daughter was born with spina bifida and walked until the age of seven, but has been confined to a wheelchair since then. She was later diagnosed with hydrocephalus, which requires a shunt to drain excess fluid from the brain. Julian’s wife has devoted her life to making sure that their daughter is looked after, putting her needs first and sacrificing the opportunity to build a career and her own pension provision, so she will very much recognise the picture set out by the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) in her brilliant opening speech.
The caring responsibilities of Julian’s wife have not come to an end because she has reached state pension age, but the financial support available to her has very much changed. Julian put something to me that I thought was worth sharing today. He compared his wife’s situation with an employer paying someone for 35 hours of work a week but expecting them to carry on working, without pay, once they reach retirement age, arguing that that is fine because they are being paid their pension.
Now, caring for a family member is not the same as employment, and all sorts of things need to be considered. I appreciate the rules about overlapping benefits and the system not paying both in full for the same period, and I know that the state pension can be topped up by pension credit if it is lower than the carer’s allowance. I am not here to say that the answer is simply to pay both the state pension and carer’s allowance to everybody caring for a loved one, but speaking to Julian left me feeling that we should take a closer look at the circumstances of older carers and whether the support available to them properly reflects the realities of their lives.
While preparing for today’s debate I spoke with Carers UK. Its research shows that around one in five carers of state pension age are living in poverty, compared with 13% of non-carers in the same group. It also reports that more than 600,000 older carers provide at least 50 hours of care every week. Those figures stood out as a reminder that caring in older age is a lot more than a few hours here and there; it is an enormous and lifelong commitment. There might be some practical steps worth considering too. Carers UK has highlighted that some carers entitled to pension credit are not receiving it and has called for simpler processes and checks when carers reach state pension age.
I am encouraged by the Government’s ambition on social care and by Baroness Casey’s review, as that will help us finally realise a system that better supports people who draw on care, their families and the people who care for them. I hope that the experiences of older, unpaid carers and the particular challenges they face when they reach state pension age are being considered as part of that work. As Julian said to me,
“Carers are the nation’s unsung heroes.”
Many of us will recognise that sentiment, and I hope we can agree that respecting carers means much more than just acknowledging how much they do. It also means asking ourselves whether the support around them is enough, particularly when the alternative is social care, which costs the state much more.
I would be grateful if the Minister could take this issue up and consider if there is scope to review the support available for older carers, whether through simpler access to existing entitlements, a closer look at the additional financial pressures they are facing or further work on how their contribution can be recognised. I am not asking for a simple answer to a very complicated policy question today; I am just asking whether we can keep looking at this matter, listen to people like Julian and his wife, and make sure that carers who continue to give so much as they grow older are not overlooked. The need for care does not stop at retirement age, and the people providing that care should not feel that their contribution has stopped counting either.