Mr. Paul Burstou (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)I start with what I hope the Minister will regard as a piece of good news. The Carers (Equal Opportunities) Bill, a private Member's BAI currently going through the House, has just concluded its Committee stage and has emerged without a vote and with a clear consensus that we hope will see it make its way on to the statute book. In a previous incarnation as a Back Bencher, the Minister introduced and took through the House private Member's legislation for carers. This issue is close to his heart and it is also relevant to the debate on older people in Sutton, which I have been fortunate in securing today, because many of my constituents who are senior citizens at e also carers.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to report to the Chamber and the Minister on a project with older people that I have been undertaking in my constituency. Over the past 18 months, I have been working closely with a range of voluntary and statutory organisations to consult older people and devise a strategy for older people living in Sutton—the aim being to listen to them and devise a strategy reflecting their concerns. I was fortunate in working closely with the Sutton seniors forum and my local branch of Age Concern, whose input has been invaluable. The seniors forum, under the leadership of the chairman, David Dombey, meets every month and regularly attracts more than 200 senior citizens to its meetings, where the issues that are covered reflect the wide range of concerns and interests of older people in the London borough of Sutton.
Sutton borough Age Concern provides a range of services for older people there. One of the most important services that it has established lately is its users and carers group, which I shall mention in a minute—not least because it is made up of older people who have been trained to work with other older people to help them talk and out find out their views on services. That group's work has been valued by Sutton council and the Sutton and Merton primary care trust.
After a round of meetings in late 2002 with council leaders, the PCT, Epsom and St. Helier NHS Trust chief executives, the local police borough commander and others, I felt that I had, in principle, a green light to start pulling together the strategy. I established a steering group with members drawn from the Sutton seniors forum, the users and carers group, Age Concern, local churches, the local authority social services department and community engagement teams, the local NHS change agency, and the older people's matron from Epsom and St. Helier, as well as a number of representatives from the PCT.
The group organised a conference that took place last July. More than 300 older people have taken part in the process, thereby contributing their ideas and time. On the day of the conference, 100 older people took part. The day was organised around a series of open questions, the aim being to create a climate in which everyone felt able to take part and contribute their ideas. There was a lot of brainstorming and small group work and people were asked to prioritise the issues that arose. A mass of good ideas came out during the day, including concerns about young people, policing and crime, and 481WH the need for a more visible police presence to reassure and deter. Health and access to good-quality chiropody was flagged up, as was the need for more active healthy living initiatives to promote active ageing.
The need to reach out to find and offer support to isolated and lonely people was also raised. That echoes the research published yesterday by the Women's Royal Voluntary Service, which highlighted the terrible cost of isolation and loneliness in our community. The WRVS found that every year 12,000 older people in Britain die alone and undiscovered in their homes. That is the equivalent of 32 lonely deaths every day. It also found that 17 per cent. of older people living alone said that they were often always lonely, and one in seven said that they were isolated in their homes and felt cut off from the outside world. Some 20 per cent. of all suicides involve pensioners. That serious point was raised during the conference and warrants local and national attention.
Transport issues were raised, particularly the attitude of some—I emphasise some—bus drivers, a complaint that was echoed by many seasoned bus users during the conference. Their concern was the tendency to be too heavy on the throttle and too hard on the brake, causing many an injury and many upsets as a consequence.
Money matters and pensions issues were aired during the day. Participants felt hard pressed to make ends meet on fixed incomes. The No. 1 concern expressed was the feeling that those who had saved for their retirement were taxed twice—on their investment and the interest. The feeling was that thrift was no c rewarded. There was also a sense of frustration that the contribution that older people can and do make goes unrecognised—for example, the role that older people fulfil as carers, often undertaking many hours of care with no entitlement to the carer's allowance. How older people are stereotyped was also raised, and one example given during the conference was the signs that warn us about older people crossing the road and how offensive those signs are. The fact that they depict. An older person bent double with a stick is itself derogatory and insulting to many older people.
Perhaps one of the most positive things to come out of a positive day was the discussion about young people. It began with concerns about antisocial behaviour and calls for parents to control their children more. However, as the discussion progressed, the question was asked, "Why are the parents losing control? Who were the parents' parents?" They were the grandparents, who were at the conference. Although they had perfectly good relationships with their grandchildren and thought them wonderful, they did not know the other children or other young people on their streets, of whom they were fearful. As a consequence of that discussion, there was a strong feeling that work was perhaps needed in Sutton and elsewhere to develop a dialogue between young and old people to find common ground.
Shortly after our conference, at an event organised by Sutton council to ascertain local young people's views on a range of issues, it emerged that they experienced the same concerns about the attitudes of bus drivers, particularly the fact that they were too heavy on the accelerator, too hard on the brake and often too hard on them. The conference generated a mass of ideas, some sense of the priorities that should be taken forward and some of the first steps needed to develop them.
482WH The next task for the steering group was to distil the day into a strategy that would form the basis of actions over the next few years. We took as our starting point the idea that people should not be defined by the services that they receive or by their illnesses or disabilities. They should be treated as people first. They have the right to be treated as equal and active partners by statutory and voluntary organisations in the borough. Before we can change the way in which services are delivered to older people, it is first necessary to change the way in which we think about older people.
The draft strategy has been written and contains six objectives. It is about securing wider ownership of the citizen-based approach that I have outlined; a sustained partnership between older people and statutory organisations; the promotion of a positive image of older people; a dialogue between older and younger people; the promotion of active ageing; and, above all, a joined-up approach to achieve a better quality of life for all older people.
The draft strategy is currently subject to consultation, and the feedback so far has been encouraging. The work on programmes such as the national service framework for older people, the Pension Service and the third age service provides a real opportunity to break out of the normal silos and adopt a more person-centred approach.
In Sutton, older people regularly make their voices heard through the seniors forum and through the work of the users and carers group. The Audit Commission's recent series of reports on the well-being of older people argued for the development of local older people's strategies. The commission points out that only 15 per cent. of older people receive care services, yet policies focus on the services to support the most vulnerable people in times of crisis. That neglects the needs of the wide range of older people who clearly aspire to an active and meaningful life.
To meet the needs of the ageing population, there should be a fundamental shift in approach to considering older people as citizens who are valuable resources rather than as dependants. To achieve that aim, the Audit Commission said that it will get local authorities to do five things. First, they should use their community leadership role to develop strategies locally. Secondly, they should have clear, committed leadership on issues relating to older people. Thirdly, they should involve and inform older people thoroughly. Fourthly, they should have good information on population trends. Fifthly, they should provide comprehensive ranges of services for older people and their carers.
Other organisations such as the national health service, voluntary organisations and the Pension Service should engage in older people strategies and undertake some of their investment planning within such frameworks. The commission will monitor all that in its performance assessment for 2005, so local authorities should be mindful of that over the coming years.
I want to ask the Minister a number of questions. Do the Government agree with the Audit Commission that such strategies provide a useful tool for shaping services around the needs of older people, and for thinking and acting outside the traditional service silos? Does he feel able to offer some encouragement to the partnership work that I have outlined this afternoon?
483WH During the conference, concerns were expressed about incomes in old age, particularly but not exclusively those of women. I was grateful on the day that the Pension Service came along and participated in the event. It went away loaded with queries but it was a useful day for it, and it was helpful that it was there. There is a feeling that there is no point in saving because investment and interest are both taxed. Income plays an important part in the choices and independence that an older person can exercise. Does the Minister agree that the Pension Service has a part to play with statutory and voluntary agencies locally to develop programmes to maximise the take-up of the full range of benefits?
I referred to the stereotyping of older people. Ageism is a serious problem. It is a societal and institutional issue and action is required on a number of levels, one of which is legislation. What came across to me during the consultation is that if the scope of the age discrimination legislation that the Government are currently considering is limited to employment, it will fail to tackle the ageism that exists in the provision of public and private sector goods and services. What we really need, and what older people want, is comprehensive age discrimination legislation.
I want to end by expressing my appreciation to those who have made possible all the work that has been done locally. I thank McCarthy and Stone, Abbeyfield, Sutton police, Sutton and Merton PCT and others for their financial sponsorship of the conference. I thank Adrian Davey of the change agent team and Janet Finlay of the community engagement team for their excellent work in facilitating the day. I also thank Les Murrells and all the other members of the users and carers group who helped out on the day. I also appreciate the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) on the day. The person I want to thank the most, because they did the most in organising the event and the work before and since is the head of my office, Ruth Dombey. She has worked incredibly hard and done an excellent job on behalf of my constituents
§ The Minister for Pensions (Malcolm Wicks)I am pleased to be able to take part in this brief discussion of an important issue. Sometimes in Adjournment debates, the hon. Member who introduces it represents a constituency that one has never been to and would be hard-pressed to find on a map, whereas today I am talking about a neighbouring borough. I represent a Croydon constituency and I know Sutton well. St. Helier hospital has been mentioned. My wife works in a pathology laboratory there, so I have an understanding of the community that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) represents.
In answer to one question, I offer encouragement to the strategy that the hon. Gentleman is undertaking with colleagues in Sutton. I was interested to hear about the forum. He has been listening to local elderly people. If there were an opportunity for me to make the long trip from Croydon to Sutton, venturing those hundreds of yards across the border with my passport despite snow, hail and rain, I would be grateful to meet members of the forum and the professionals involved. Perhaps we could arrange that to happen in the coming months.
484WH Although our Department is the Department for Work and Pensions, we have a lead responsibility in Whitehall for older people's issues. That does not mean that we run the national health service or the local community police, as the hon. Gentleman understands. However, we have that lead role, and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is the Cabinet champion for older people and chairs an important committee. We take that role very seriously.
The demographics of ageing and the ageing of our population are a formidable challenge. I have always regarded it as a challenge rather than a crisis, which some would suggest it is. Having said that, I am always somewhat hesitant in generalising about the needs of elderly people, because they come in all shapes and sizes, so to speak. That became clear to me recently when I visited a nursing home. The youngest resident was 60, and the oldest was 102. Although everyone in that community shared a need for nursing care, there was a wide age span.
Today, unlike 100 years ago, people's retirements may last 30 or more years. The average is probably 20 years. There is a danger of generalising, but one of the major themes of the hon. Gentleman's remarks was that we should not stereotype older people. We must recognise the commitment and contribution that our elders make to the community, as well as some of the more challenging issues of disability and dependency. We should not make the mistake of going to the other end of the continuum and talk about ageing in a romantic and positive way because fundamental issues are involved. Let us consider, for example, the scourge of Alzheimer's disease and the challenges that that poses to care agencies, the health service and the important army of carers, with which the hon. Gentleman, like me, is very involved.
Without our younger and sometimes not so young elderly population, what would be the position of the voluntary effort in our society? Many community and voluntary organisations in Sutton, Croydon and elsewhere are manned, or womaned, by younger elderly people. Many school governors are elderly people. Indeed, many carers are elderly people who often care for their elders, such as a young 60-something caring for a parent who is over the age of 90. We must recognise the contributions of older people not only in rhetoric but in practice.
There is not time to talk about everything that the Government want to do for older people, but I shall highlight one or two matters that are close to the theme of the debate. Our aim is to move towards—we are certainly not there yet—one-stop access to public services for older people. We want dedicated, integrated services, not only throughout the Government, but linked to voluntary organisations and, where appropriate, the private sector, including the utility companies. We are listening to older people and devising a strategy to shape public services positively to meet the wide and varied needs of 21st century senior citizens.
The Labour party's manifesto of 2001 included a commitment to
build on Care Direct to provide integration of health, housing, benefits and social care for older people. This will be an integrated `third age service' to help older people".485WH I shall say more about Care Direct, later. We are making progress. We are working with partner organisations, Age Concern, Help the Aged and the better government for older people network, as well a other Government Departments to build the so-called third age service to meet older people's social and care needs. I say "so-called" third age service, because I do not believe that that term is readily discussed on the St. Helier estate or in Thornton Heath. We need a language to describe the service, which real people would understand fully. I used the phrase as shorthand.I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is important that we listen to older people. Key to the new approach are joint visiting teams that are built around local service and local authority staff with a single management structure. Joint teams are certainly one of the key building blocks for third age development. They provide a basis for wider engagement with other partners. Nine joint teams are up and running in the south-west, with more to become operational in other regions later this year.
I visited Taunton, Somerset, where Care Direct has really got off the ground. I saw joint teams in action. Local Pension Service people are working in the same team with the same management structure as staff from the local authority. One of them would visit an elderly person and be able to provide information and access to council or pension services. That is what I mean by a joint team approach.
In Somerset, a Care Direct number is being widely publicised. As with NHS Direct. the older person—or their carer, volunteer or whoever —can call that number and get not just information about the things that I have mentioned, such as benefits, pensions, housing and social services, but access to the relevant service. That is so important. That is a simple idea. How many of us, when we want to contact bits of the welfare state, struggle to remember how to do that, and the relevant local phone number? We would like that idea and the joint action teams to be developed.
On incomes, we are working with partners on pensioner poverty. We have designed what we call pension credit with the needs of older people in mind. That policy is now much easier to access. None of us likes filling in official forms; I am not very good at it, and elderly people do not particularly like doing it. With pension credit, if someone wants to apply through a form, they can do so. It is shorter than before and is written in plain English. However, if they do not want to fill in the form, they do not have to. They can ring a freephone number and apply for pension credit over the telephone. Our customer surveys show that elders like to do that. A 20-minute phone conversation will often deliver the pension credit. Yes, the form has to be checked and identification has to be proved for antifraud purposes but it is a much clearer approach to applying for pension credit.
I am pleased to say that, at this moment, about 2.6 million people are receiving pension credit. We reckon that, of those, 1.5 million are receiving more money through pension credit than they did under the old income support system. That is important.
Turning to Sutton and Cheam, only a few weeks ago, the Pension Service bus was parked on Sutton high street for a week. Staff from our local service were on 486WH board, dealing with pension-related inquiries. On the first day alone, they saw 1 l 1 customers, helping them with queries about state pension forecasts, pension credit calculations and the rest.
One example might illustrate our approach. A lady—I will call her Mrs. G—visited the Pension Service bus in Sutton to see if she would be financially better off by claiming pension credit. She was in receipt of state pension, a small occupational pension and some savings. She was a home owner. When the member of staff conducted the entitlement check. it was estimated that Mrs. G would be entitled to more than £22 a week in pension credit. It was also found that she should be getting £18.75 council tax benefit. That is one example of a real success. That is more than £40 extra every week
Mrs. G completed the relevant application form with the assistance of staff, and has joined the 2,085 households in Sutton and Cheam who, so far—we are still rolling out pension credit—are in receipt of the credit. On average, they are receiving £44.75 a week. Other aspects of our policy are having a beneficial impact.
§ Mr. BurstowThe point that the Minister is making about the third age service and the arrival of the bus on Sutton high street is useful. Can he say a little more about the Government's intention to roll out the third age service? When might it be rolled out as far as Sutton and Cheam? Some of the benefits experienced in the west country that he outlined would be of interest to both his and my constituents.
§ Malcolm WicksOne of the reasons why I was eager to take part in the debate is that the hon. Gentleman's approach to the issue is much the same as mine. There may not always be this Lib-Labery across the Croydon-Sutton boundary, by the way; I am not promising that this benevolence on my part will continue over the next 12 months. I can add only that I hope to say more about those issues during this calendar year. He should watch this space.
In Sutton and Cheam, there were more than 16,000 winter fuel payments last winter. We do not yet have the full figures for this winter. Of the payments for this year, 3,845 were made to people over 80. This winter, those people will have got the extra £100 for households with one person or more over the age of 80. I hope that that will be of interest to the people of Sutton and Cheam as the final snow flurries affect our boroughs.
It is important to recognise that alongside benefits there are many other important issues. The national service framework for older people is a 10-year plan to improve the quality of and access to health and social care services for older people. It includes specific standards on eliminating age discrimination, which is important, on promoting a healthy and active later life and on the improvement of services associated with ageing, strokes, falls and mental health care for older people. That is an important strategy, and we work closely with our colleagues on those issues. We must throw into the dustbin of health care history the notion that, just because one is of a certain age, a medical practitioner can say, "Well, what do you expect at your age?"
487WH Increasingly, medical practitioners are treating a condition whatever a person's age and perhaps we need to progress that even further. That is vital in an ageing community. We recognise the importance of other services such as transport. We are blessed in London by the fact that our elderly people have access to public transport free of charge at certain times of the day; we are in a more beneficial situation than many other parts of the country.
From my conversations with older people, I know that antisocial behaviour—vandalism, petty crime—often makes them fearful about venturing out after a certain time, when it starts to get dark. The hon. Gentleman touched on that. All that we are doing to promote safer communities—putting more police officers on the beat and the rest—is important in relation to that problem.
We are about providing greater incomes in retirement, particularly targeted at the very elderly, who tend to be the poorest. Two out of three people receiving pension credit are women. Why is that? It is because they do not have the full national insurance contribution record due to past working patterns, having brought up 488WH children and having cared for other people. They did not have access to the occupational pension. We are also promoting greater standards of care and well-being.
I and the Government are engaged in an agenda at local level about how to rebuild the welfare state—I include the voluntary sector in that—around the needs of older people and their families, rather than expecting older people somehow to negotiate what often seems a complex structure of local welfare services. It is important that the welfare state take the initiative in making itself more relevant to the older person.
Those are fine words perhaps. We must put them into practice by listening to older people, and hearing about their needs and their understanding of their local community, as the hon. Gentleman has done. We do practical things such as creating joint visiting teams and getting the local Pension Service, an excellent new development, to link up with the local council. We have one-stop shops and the one phone number. All those things will help us to translate good principle into decent social health and benefit practice
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Four o'clock