Housing for older people: we need a new national strategy to get this right

It’s not just "generation rent" that is struggling; the government must do more to support the elderly in finding a comfortable home for later life
From issues of affordability and social housing to the discussion over where best to build more homes, housing policy is never far from the centre of the political debate.
While a great deal of attention is often given to steps to help young people in the housing market, with a growing ageing population there must also be a focus on ensuring that we can support older people to live comfortably in later life.
By making sure we have the right measures in place and the housing on offer is suitable to the hugely varied needs of older people, we can not only go some way to easing pressures in the wider housing sector but also help to address another of the great challenges of our time—how to look after the ageing population and reduce demands on a social care system that is already under pressure.
The Communities and Local Government Select Committee, of which I am Chair, has just published a new report on precisely these issues. Underpinning our recommendations is a call for a national strategy for older people’s housing to bring together and improve policy in an area that has been too disparate and disjointed for too long. A key aspect of this is increasing the supply of new homes for older people.
National and local planning policy should be coordinated to encourage the construction of more of all types of housing for older people. Just as you would expect in any other age group, the needs and preferences of those in later years is very varied so we should make sure this is reflected in the type of accommodation on offer.
Extra care, retirement, sheltered and accessible housing across the social and private sectors is needed. We heard evidence of a shortfall in supply of specialist homes for older people in the face of significant demand. This limits the housing options available to older people and the opportunity to derive the health and wellbeing benefits linked to specialist homes.
An amendment to the National Planning Policy Framework to emphasise the key importance of the provision of housing for older people in both local authority plan making and decision taking would send a strong and much-needed message.
To help with delivery at a local level, councils should also be required to publish a strategy explaining how they intend to meet older residents’ housing needs and identify a target proportion of new housing to be developed for this purpose and identify suitable well-connected sites for it.
Reforms to the planning classification of specialist housing would reduce the level of planning obligations required from developers and act as an incentive to build more of these age-appropriate homes. The Committee heard that the level of planning obligations—which require the negative impact of a development to be mitigated—is increased as a result of the communal areas which are a feature of specialist housing. This is impeding the delivery of homes.
Encouraging planning authorities to facilitate and developers to build more homes would have a large and lasting effect for generations, but the committee is also calling for smaller practical steps that would make a huge difference to older people, especially those who would like to remain in their own homes.
The government should restore funding to the FirstStop Advice Service to run an expanded telephone operation giving a valuable holistic service for older people so they can be properly informed and make the best decisions about where and how they want to live.
This would give advice on everything from heating and care options to adaptations and moving home.
Another measure that would have a real everyday impact would be the expansion of Home Improvement Agencies to ensure there is at least one in each local authority area. Most older people would prefer to stay in their homes, and proper support from handypeople and a “trusted trader” scheme could have a significant role to play in providing small repairs, general maintenance and ensuring that they could stay comfortable, safe and healthy.
We would hope ministers will now take our recommendations seriously as the government brings forward its green paper on social care later in the year. Ensuring the right kind of housing is in place can help reduce the need for home or residential care, relieving pressure on the health service and helping older people stay healthy and live independently in their homes.
This article was first published in Prospect magazine on February 27^th 2018.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/housing-for-older-people-we-need-a-new-national-strategy-to-get-this-right

I wouldn't bet on it

Some of our high streets – in large village, as well as towns and cities – now seem to be over-run with betting shops.

This is big business. The difference between the amount betting companies take from punters and the amount they pay out was a record £13.8 billion last year, up 65% from £8.36 billion in 2008/09. No-one would be surprised if a government focused on the potential tax take from gambling rather than the damage being done to individuals and families.

The Gambling Commission says that more than 2 million people are either problem gamblers or at risk of addiction. The number of gambling addicts in the UK has increased by 30% to 430,000 since 2012.

A recent report found that the total cost to the taxpayer of problem gambling, including through mental health services, police intervention and homelessness, is probably more than £1 billion a year. Yet the voluntary levy for education, research and treatment raised just £8.6m.

But, it isn’t the odd flutter on the dogs, horses, football or even elections which explains the proliferation of betting shops and that is causing most concern to observers.

The biggest problem is the fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs) – the infernal machines sometimes described as‘the crack cocaine of gambling’ – that can so quickly consume the wage packet before the household bills are paid and food put on the table.

The government has been conducting a consultation which, amongst other things, is considering a reduction in the maximum stake which can be made on each bet.

A new study, using the betting companies’ own data, has found that more than 30% of sessions with a £20 stake resulted in losses greater than £100, and 6% gave losses greater than £500. With a £50 stake, more than 9 in 10 sessions ended with a loss of more than £100 and in nearly 8 out of 10 sessions the losses were greater than £500. However, sessions with a maximum stake of £2 delivered no losses of more than £100.

The betting companies have been lobbying hard to prevent a proposal to cut the maximum stake to £2, arguing that the tax loss to the government would be dramatic and that government shouldn’t interfere in individual’s freedoms to gamble if they want to.

Now a think tank report says that the possible loss of tax revenue, from cutting the maximum stake to £2, would be far lower than the industry has previously claimed. And, when we consider the cost to individuals, families and communities, and the cost to the taxpayer caused by problem gambling and gambling addiction, the civil liberties’ argument simply doesn’t stack up.

The government should now impose a £2 maximum stake on FOBTs and it should require a proper compulsory levy on the betting companies to fund education, research and treatment for problem gambling.

But, will this government do the right thing? I wouldn’t bet on it.

STILL UNFAIR, STILL WRONG

Just two weeks ago, I wrote about the government’s degrading and unfair treatment of applicants for Personal Independence Payments (PIPs)[1].
PIPs are a replacement for Disability Living Allowance for people aged 16-64 with long-term chronic health problems or disabilities. A full roll-out of PIP was originally planned for October 2013; it has now been revised to by mid-2019.
I described how the PIP assessment process was simply not fit for purpose and how the courts had confirmed that the government had acted unlawfully in its introduction and implementation.
You may have thought that I was commenting for party political advantage or over-egging the pudding. If that was the case, today’s report on PIPs by the all-party House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee might make you think again.
The Committee’s Chair, Frank Field, says that
“…a pervasive lack of trust is undermining its entire operation. In turn, this is translating into untenable human costs to claimants and financial costs to the public purse. No one should have any doubt the process needs urgent change.”
Whilst the vast majority of claimants want the assessment interviews recorded, as a safeguard for the claimant and the government, the Department for Work and Pensions is stubbornly resisting and refusing.
The PIP Assessments are carried out by contractors Capita and Atos. The Committee says Ministers should consider taking these assessments in-house as
“the existing contractors have consistently failed to meet basic performance standards but other companies are hardly scrambling over each other to take over”.
The committee said that this assessment work was outsourced in the name of efficiency and consistency. However, none of the providers had ever hit their quality performance targets, yet a core theme from the research had been that
“…claimants do not believe assessors can be trusted to record what took place during the assessment accurately [which] has implications far beyond the minority of claimants who directly experience poor decision making”.
What an indictment!
This isn’t about party politics. It is about treating the most vulnerable of the UK’s citizens fairly and with humanity. Isn’t that what British values are about?
[1] Unfair and Wrong 31/01/2018

Why do people fall for this?

Whilst the national media is obsessed with the reporting of the Brexit machinations, this week’s little reported government announcements about local government and police finance will have a comparable impact on our area, our services and our quality of life.

Let’s just focus on the police and the threats to our community safety.

The Conservatives long ago ditched their (quite undeserved) reputation as the party of law and order. It’s now clear that this government has given up on any pretense of acting to ‘protect the public’.

This will be the eighth consecutive year of police cuts. Police officer numbers nationally have fallen to the lowest level in three decades at the same time as some types of crime are increasing dramatically.

In South Yorkshire, the government announced another £3m real-terms cut in grant between this year and next and told the Police and Crime Commissioner to fill the gap with an inflation-busting precept increase on our council tax.

The budge cuts have meant that since 2010, South Yorkshire Police has lost  480 police officers (a 16% cut) and 117 PCSOs (a 36% cut).

It’s little surprise that the crime figures released last month showed the highest annual rise in police recorded crime since comparable records began in 2002.

In South Yorkshire, violent crime rose by 62%, robberies rose by 46% and total recorded crime (excluding fraud) rose by 34%. 

Our police are at breaking point and the Tory prescription is yet more reckless funding cuts.

This is madness. It’s little wonder that local people are concerned about the increasing risk to their community safety. It’s more police and less cuts we need, not the other way round.

Yet, the government’s strategy is very simple.

• Ensure big cuts in national funding of local police with the savings being used to fund tax cuts for the already wealthy
• Take credit for cutting the national tax burden
• Tell police and crime commissioners to push up precepts and council taxes to fill the budget gaps
• Blame police commissioners for local tax hikes, falling police numbers and rising crime.

Why do people fall for this?

TAXI LICENSING UPDATE

For a long time now, I have been campaigning for big changes in the licensing arrangements for taxis and private hire vehicles and their drivers.

This was in the opposition of many Conservative MPs who, as part of their ideological obsession with cutting regulation (buses, banking, health and safety, workers’ rights and more), had been pressing the government to reduce what they called ‘the regulatory burden’. In fact, the Conservative/LibDem Coalition government had already removed some of the licensing powers of local councils and were proposing further cuts in powers as well as resources.

Then, of course, new technological initiatives (like UBER) demonstrated that the law relating to taxi licensing – much of it from the 19^th century when the taxis were horse-drawn hackney cabs – was completely inadequate to address the challenges of the 21^st century. The deregulatory pressure was increasing.

However, the importance of this issue really reached the public consciousness in the shocking revelations about the roles of some – of course, a minority – taxi and private hire drivers in child sexual abuse in Rotherham and, subsequently revealed, in other parts of the country. Suddenly, thank goodness, the government started back-tracking and some, previously voluble, MPs went silent.

There have been some changes in the licensing law, but nowhere near enough.

I have previously pointed to the existence of private hire vehicles and drivers, with licences being issued in Lancashire and Lincolnshire (and elsewhere), operating in Sheffield and South Yorkshire. Why? Because some drivers have found that the existing law is being operated in a relaxed way in those areas. Bluntly, they’re getting a licence there when they would be turned down for a licence in Rotherham or Sheffield. That simply isn’t acceptable.

I have been backing a campaign with the Suzy Lamplugh Trust to update the law. A recent report  by the  Trust revealed that taxi and private hire vehicle licences are being granted to drivers with criminal convictions that include violent offences. Passenger safety is being compromised because there are no national minimum standards to enforce sufficient safety checks for taxi and private hire vehicle licensing.

Of course the majority of drivers do not pose a personal safety risk to passengers, but they, and we, are being let down by a minority who are slipping through the net. Although taxi and private hire drivers hold a position of trust, transporting passengers who are often alone and in a locked vehicle, the highest level of criminal checks is not required in law, only recommended in guidelines. Passengers are at risk.

Research into safety checks for taxi and private hire vehicle drivers highlighted:

• only 46 out of 316 local authorities are able to provide detailed information about drivers’ criminal histories on request;
• a significant number of licensed taxi and private hire vehicle drivers highlighted in the research have criminal records including convictions for actual bodily harm, common assault, speeding and drink driving;
• current taxi and private hire vehicle drivers have successfully applied for or renewed their licence despite having committed crimes in the last 6 years. Their convictions included battery, assault occasioning actual bodily harm as well as speeding;
• at least 865 drivers in just 38 licensing authorities have successfully applied for or renewed their licence despite their criminal convictions; and
• some licensed taxi and private hire vehicle drivers have multiple convictions. One currently licensed driver has over 36 separate convictions dating from 1973 to 2017, with offences including actual bodily harm, taking a vehicle without the owner’s consent and threatening behaviour.

So, as well as backing the Trust’s campaign, I have also been supporting a Private Members Bill in Parliament, promoted by my colleague Daniel Zeichner to close some of the loopholes. The Bill isn’t perfect and it can’t be comprehensive but we can’t wait any longer for the government to act.

We need a strong national licensing framework, with committed local implementation. All our health and safety depends on it.

Unfair and wrong

This government, like its’ predecessor coalition government, has pursued a determined course in cutting financial support and benefits to those on the lowest incomes and those with disabilities.
It’s bad enough that Mrs May is hitting hardest those who can least afford it. It’s even worse when the government tries to achieves its objectively by acting unlawfully, makes and announces decisions in ways designed to avoid scrutiny and then plays fast and loose when the courts say the government is wrong.
The latest example of the government’s degrading and unfair treatment concerns Personal Independence Payments (PIPs). It’s a replacement for Disability Living Allowance for people aged 16-64 with long-term chronic health problems or disabilities. A full roll-out of PIP was originally planned for October 2013; it has now been revised to by mid-2019.
In February 2017 the government changed the PIPs law through the back-door – it couldn’t be voted on by Parliament – to change the PIP regulations to strip entitlements from what it said was over 160,000 disabled people – a £3.7bn cut. The Government even failed to consult its own Advisory Committee about the changes. Labour MPs spoke out strongly against the changes.
The government then spent £181,000 trying to defend the indefensible in court. On 21 December 2017 the High Court ruled that the Government’s changes to PIP were both unlawful – because of the failure to consult and “blatantly discriminatory” against people with mental health conditions. Despite questions, the government remained silent about its response.
Then, a month later, late on Friday 19 January, to avoid scrutiny, the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions announced that the Government would not challenge the ruling. He said “(we)
accept the High Court’s judgment; we do not agree with some of the detail.” Subsequently, he admitted that up to 220,000 people could be affected, 30% higher than we’d been told.
It is clear that the PIP assessment process is simply not fit for purpose. It’s time for the government to listen to those with serious health and disability issues, their families and the doctors, charities and experts who are calling for urgent reform to the plans.

Grief and debt

Every year, about 5000 children die in the UK.

Some are stillborn and some die shortly after birth from complications. Some are born with, or develop, life-limiting illnesses. Some die from tragic accidents.

Whatever the reason, the fact remains that some 10,000 parents each year have to face the unimaginable grief of losing a child.

Nobody expects to bury their own child. No-one plans or sets money aside for this. Therefore, when having to cope with the worst possible experience they will ever have to face, bereaved parents have the added worry of finding funds for a funeral they never wanted nor expected.

Some 14 months ago, Carolyn Harris, the MP for Swansea West, spoke eloquently in Parliament about the loss of her young son Martin. It was from this that the idea of a Children’s Bereavement Fund, to help parents in those tragic circumstances, was first conceived.

I am embarrassed, but pleased, that the Welsh Government listened and acted. It realised that, for a modest amount of money, it could make a real difference to bereaved families in their hour of need. It established a Children’s Funeral Fund meaning that, across Wales, with the support of funeral directors and many local authorities and others, parents could bury their children without the added worry about how they could afford it.

Many times, over the last year, MPs from all parties have pressed the government to show compassion  and to work with others to follow the Welsh model. There have been many discussions with Ministers and hopes have been raised.

Unfortunately, the government has failed to act and two budgets have passed without any positive announcement about the relatively small sum of money required to bring this scheme into being.

Today, I – together with MPs from all parties – have written to the Prime Minister to ask her, once again, to take the initiative to help bereaved parents across the country. We want to ensure that parents, already struggling to cope with the cruellest fate life has dealt them, do not have to face the added burden of indebtedness.

If you support us, please write to the Prime Minister and tell her so.

Ducking and diving and a lack of transparency

Asking difficult questions is one of the key tasks of members of parliament. By difficult, I don’t mean that the answers are necessarily complicated, but that the simple and accurate responses are likely to prove embarrassing to the government.

So, it is no surprise that some Government Ministers turned the whole business of not answering questions in to an art form. They would commit thousands of hours of civil servant time in to providing non-answers, misleading responses or the most dubious legal justifications for making ‘no comment’.

Former Conservative Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, was an expert at all this.

He committed £250 million of tax-payers’ money in to an inept promise to ensure that every household would have “a weekly all-purpose refuse collection”; he called it a “basic human right”. In fact, in each and every year in which he was the Minister, the number of households getting a weekly collection dropped by hundreds of thousands, with the biggest falls being in Conservative and Liberal Democrat controlled councils. But, however often and in different ways he was asked the question, he found numerous ways of refusing to provide the numbers.

Eric was just the same when it came to not answering questions about the government’s new-build housing commitments. It was clear that none of the promises were being kept but, instead of providing the answers, they’d sack or move the Housing Minister. It was no surprise that Mrs May has sacked another one in her latest reshuffle when it became clear that the last promise had proved to be little more than a newspaper headline.

Before Christmas, Theresa May spoke about the need for transparency in government and wrote to her Ministers:

“Online transparency is crucial to delivering value for money, to cutting waste and inefficiency, and to ensuring every pound of taxpayers’ money is spent in the best possible way…

The sunlight of transparency also acts in itself as an important check and balance, and helps ensure the highest standards of public life among senior government representatives.”

So, you might be surprised to learn that, in response to a Freedom of Information request to publish the guidance given to government departments on how to prepare registers of Ministerial gifts, hospitality, travel and meetings – all mentioned in the Mrs May’s letter on transparency – No 10 says ‘No’.

It said:

“…we consider that this information is exempt from disclosure under section 35(1)(a) (formulation and development of government policy).  While we recognise there is a public interest in understanding how this transparency information is prepared, we consider that this is outweighed by the public interest in not providing information that may be soon out of date and therefore potentially misleading and  inaccurate. On balance it is therefore not in the public interest to release this material."

It is difficult to believe that the supposed legal justification for the refusal will stand up in court, but it will take a lot of hard work and probably more than 12 months to show that. The argument that “the information may become out of date or may be misleading” is not a relevant public interest factor for refusing disclosure.

Therefore, I have now tabled a Written Parliamentary Question to Theresa May’s Cabinet Officer Minister asking him to publish the guidance. He is due to answer it on January 29^th.

On that day, we’ll find out whether Mrs May is committed to the transparency she asserted just a month ago,  or whether it was simply more hot air from this government.

You couldn’t make it up

Just imagine a fictional drama which featured the leader of a right-wing, anti-European, populist political party deserting his (third) wife and children in Austria, then entering a new relationship with a model, half his age, who specialised in sending racist messages to her friends about the prospects for the royal family which, when made public, resulted in the leader ditching the model in a desperate bid to keep his position.
Just imagine a drama which suggested that the same party’s elected representatives in the Welsh Assembly had decided to prevent the latest representative – only elected this month – from being a member of its group because they don’t like the staff she has appointed.
Just imagine a drama which suggested that the former leader of that same party had claimed that his principles had “cost him a knighthood”, just two weeks before the European Parliament – following an investigation – announced it was reclaiming £35,000 from him because of his mis-spending.
Now, just imagine If the BBC had broadcast these dramas as radio plays.
Undoubtedly, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph would be publishing editorials condemning the state broadcaster for its disgraceful abuse of its position, followed by demands for the BBC to be broken up and privatised.
They would be supported by the alt-right commentators on social media and President Trump would be busily retweeting the demands.
Hundreds of members of the party would be writing angry letters to The Star and Yorkshire Post and be ringing Toby Foster on Radio Sheffield to demand retribution.
Of course, no broadcaster would treat you seriously if you wrote plays with content like this.
Why should they? You couldn’t make it up.
Except, of course, that I didn’t have to make this up. It was what made the news this morning and…… no…… it wasn’t fake news.
It should provide a cautionary tale to recall next time you are asked to cast your vote.
As Churchill once commented “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried”.
We can all make mistakes and we should learn from them.
So, next time, make sure you look well behind the populist rhetoric before you put your X on the ballot paper.

Too little, too late

More than 400,000 patients have now waited longer than 18 weeks for their operations compared to less than 250,880 in 2010.

10% of arrivals at A&E are still waiting to be seen 4 hours later. More than 50,000 patients each month are now waiting more than 4 hours in A&E from the time a decision has been taken to admit them to hospital until the admission takes place.

Patients arriving at A&E by ambulance are meant to be handed over to staff within 15 minutes. Between 20th November to 31st December, more than 75,000 patients waited for over 30 minutes in the back of ambulances so far this winter. 17,000 patients waited over 60 minutes.

In the week running up to Christmas, over one third of children’s care units were 100% full, with not a single spare bed.

This week, the new Conservative Health Minister told us that we shouldn’t be concerned that, at times, there are no beds to which patients can be admitted, as there are always chairs, so they don’t have to lie on the floor! Can you believe it?

At the same time we learned that hospitals have already been advised to defer non-urgent operations until the end of January to ease pressures. This is an unprecedented move. It is likely that 55,000 operations will be cancelled, with knock-on effects throughout the rest of the year at least.

When interviewed by Andrew Marr on TV, the Prime Minister told us that this was all part of a carefully planned arrangement to deal with winter pressures and that “the NHS is better prepared for winter than ever before.”

Given that we haven’t had a flu epidemic (although numbers have increased in the last week), that novo-virus isn’t running riot, and that ‘winter weather accident admissions’ are lower than normal, this is a staggering decision. Even Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston, a practicing GP and Chair of the Health Select Committee, warned that Theresa May must “get a better grip”.

All last year, the government was warned consistently about the looming crisis, but it wasn’t until 22nd November that the Chancellor announced some extra funds to meet winter pressures.

Too little, too late.