Contribution
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. You always have a wonderful smile and you give us encouragement when we come along. That helps us to talk about subjects that are sometimes quite difficult to talk about—this is one of them. It is also a pleasure to see the Minister in his place. I look forward, as we all do, to his response to the debate.
Over my years as an elected representative—it has been a long time—I have met some young carers and unpaid carers. I have to start my contribution by paying tribute to them—those who quietly, tirelessly and selflessly dedicate their lives to looking after loved ones. What have I seen? I have seen the profound exhaustion. I have seen the absolute devotion. I have seen the immense financial and emotional toll. It is a fundamental truth that unpaid carers are filling a massive breach that the state simply cannot afford to fill. Without them, our health and social care system would collapse overnight.
I always give a Northern Ireland perspective. I wish I could say that it would not be replicated in what others will say today, but on this it is the very same. We have some 220,000 carers providing vital support to sick, elderly or disabled family members and friends. That is roughly one in eight adults. It breaks my heart to note that we also have roughly 17,500 children and young adult carers in Northern Ireland carrying a physical and emotional burden that no young shoulder should ever have to bear, but they are bearing it.
The latest research from Carers NI reveals that unpaid carers save the Northern Ireland Executive an astronomical £5.8 billion every single year. That is because if staff were doing that work, it would cost £16 million every single day, or more than £660,000 every single hour. That is equivalent to 80% of the entire day-to-day Department of Health budget.
In my Strangford constituency, in the Ards and North Down area, the local reality hits even closer to home. We have some 18,000 unpaid carers in our local communities, from the streets of Newtownards and Comber right down to the most isolated parts of the Ards peninsula. They are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. They are the partners, the parents and the children who have stepped into the breach because their love for their family overrides everything else.
How do we reward—I say “we”, but it is not us personally; it is government—that immense contribution? We reward them with poverty. We reward them with isolation and institutional neglect. The poverty rate among young carers in Northern Ireland stands at a shocking 28%. For those trying to survive on carer’s allowance, the situation is dire. The cost of living crisis has pushed them to the absolute brink, with more than half struggling to pay basic utility bills and over a third being forced to skip meals just so that they can look after their loved ones.
More than 52% of carers in Northern Ireland report that their physical health has suffered due to their responsibilities. Their days have a sense of fear and dread. Our carers in Northern Ireland do not even have the statutory baseline of protection. They are forced to reduce their hours or leave the workforce entirely, with nearly 30% of local carers having to give up their jobs to care. The impact on the carers is massive; poverty, for 28% of carers in Northern Ireland, is extreme.
This is the responsibility of the DWP, not the Minister, but every week in my office, sometimes more than once, my staff and I have to take on the case of someone who has had an overpayment. Sometimes they are a carer, and we have to intervene and help to get a repayment system that they can cope with, and it is all because of a mistake that was made. I am not talking about those who blatantly take advantage of the DWP system; I am talking about the ones who come to me—and probably to you, too, Mrs Barker—on a regular basis, who have to repay a statutory payment. It is a disgrace that we penalise those who want to work a few extra hours while managing their care duties. Does the Minister agree that it is high time that we stop treating unpaid carers as a free resource to prop up a failing social care system?
I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister says he will address this, but my goodness me, do it not just in England but in Northern Ireland. Will the Government commit to a comprehensive cross-departmental review of carer’s allowance thresholds and work closely with the Stormont Executive to deliver a ringfenced financial package and proper respite care, to ensure that those who care for our society are finally cared for themselves? That is what I want; I think it is what everybody wants.
Burnout is a real thing. Without support, we risk carers not only being unable to care for their loved ones but needing care themselves. That is what the ones I meet tell me. All we need to do is look at them. I am not better than anybody else, but when I engage with them, I can quickly understand how things are. This precarious house of cards around carers must be sheltered from the wind, and the Government must do that or pay an ultimate, unfathomable cost.