Rt Hon John Healey, Shadow Health Secretary Speech to IPPR – 22 June 2011
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Rt Hon John Healey, Shadow Health Secretary Speech to IPPR – 22 June 2011 The Promise of Britain: A fair deal for a new old age Introduction Thank you Nick. May I say an institutional ‘thank you” to the ippr for hosting us today, and a personal ‘thank you’ for the work you did in Government and have continued to do at ippr to develop our Labour plans for a new and fairer deal for old age. Can I also thank the number of you here from care organisations who have worked with Emily Thornberry and I in the 9 months we’ve been doing our jobs in Labour’s shadow health and care team. I used to think those in the housing field are highly committed to their cause. But the passion shared by people involved in care, whether as campaigners, professionals, users or researchers is truly striking. I have been struck by your anger and concern at the cuts care services face as a result of the Government’s choices in cutting public spending as it hits families and the most vulnerable people hard, costs jobs and makes the national deficit harder to pay down. But I have also been struck by your optimism in the midst of austerity, and by the faith that you show – despite all that is happening to welfare and care services – that we can forge a new deal for the future of care in our country. I want to talk today about what a fair new deal for care should look like, particularly for older people. But I want to put that in the context of where Labour is now, just over a year since the election. In truth, during this first year following the Election, we’ve been learning opposition fast. I see the imperatives of effective opposition as the four ‘A’s. Attack and challenge to try to stop the worst of what the Government is doing is clearly our first task. Indeed, it is our duty as the only, as well as the Official, Opposition Party. This is necessary but not sufficient, and Labour must also both build Alliances and make Arguments that others come to accept and see as right. We’ve done all three in leading opposition to the government’s NHS reorganisation and legislation, though some of this is in public and some behind the scenes. But whilst we challenge the Government – and stiffen the resolve of others to do the same – the fourth imperative of Opposition is to show people the Alternative – a different vision and future for the country. 1 This is very much the mission that Ed Miliband has set himself as Labour leader. He talks with passion about the “Promise of Britain” to young people that opportunities for them will be better than for their parents. Challenges of care for ageing society I want to extend that today and talk about the promise of Britain for the next and future generations of older people. And I want to do so based on Labour’s basic values of opportunity, security, fairness and dignity for all – which I believe are consistent also with the priorities of older people. Last decade, Britain was the first country in Europe where the number of over‐60s overtook the number of under‐16s. We have already reached the point where, according to Carers UK, the cost to society of caring has overtaken the cost of the NHS And in the next Parliament we will reach the point where the need for informal care outstrips the availability of working age family members to provide that care. So one of the big challenges for Britain is how to provide secure and sustainable care in old age. This challenge is compounded by increasing working age disability, but today I want to focus on the ageing challenge. I believe this to be a moral, social and economic challenge. A Moral challenge – because of our duty as a society to our vulnerable people. A Social challenge – because a fair and sustainable care system is central to well‐functioning family and community life An Economic challenge – because unmet care need is an economic burden that holds back employment, productivity and growth. Optimistic vision I describe this as a “challenge”. And some say with pessimism that this is impossible in light of the present fiscal pressures. But we need to offer an optimistic vision in hard times, as Attlee offered in the 1940s. Amidst massive opposition from the Conservative Party, Labour had the vision to create a National Health Service, free at the point of need and use to everybody regardless of their 2 ability to pay. Labour’s courage then has helped millions of people since to live happily and healthily well into older age – a dream their grandparents could barely imagine. I think our political debate lacks a breadth and vision. While our policy language of ‘burdens’, ‘challenges’ and ‘time bombs’ we allow ourselves to be constrained by narrow horizons and a cautious, conservative mindset. This language and thinking is past its sell‐by date. Instead we require a clear take on how the world is changing. Our lives are very different from our parents lives – and our children’s lives will be just as different from ours. For our grandparents, retirement was often just a few years after they stopped work. Today, those of us who reach 65 can expect to live another 20 years, mostly in good health. One in five of us alive in Britain will reach 100 .... I won’t be one of them ... but our children have the prospect of living one third of their lives in retirement. This is unprecedented historically, and is a great cause for celebration, giving us many exciting new opportunities. But it also challenges many of our assumptions – about the family, the workplace, and our lifelong pattern of saving. Today, as we contemplate retirement, we are more likely to think of global travel, gap years and grandparenting than see it as a period of rest and inactivity. But for many of us, expectations are running well ahead of reality. To make retirement a time of opportunity, people need the freedom to choose for themselves. Retirement should not be ‘one size fits all’. We have led different lives, have different interests and commitments and want different things from retirement. In the last decade, in so many areas of society, we have torn down barriers which separate people. Civil rights, gender equality and gay rights. But we are called again now to do the same and transform the way we think about older age and older people. We understand aspiration, ambition, independence, belonging and hope in our own lives. We rarely recognise it but this is exactly what older people want for themselves. Labour’s record This is not a new challenge, nor need we see this as a year zero. Labour made progress in government – for current pensioners and for those of us from the post‐war baby boom period who don’t think of ourselves as ‘old’ but rather facing or contemplating new stages in our lives of retirement, bereavement or becoming a 3 grandparent. Although in the policy and political world we are more accustomed to discussing the stages of life in earlier years – of childhood, teens, starting work and becoming a parent – rather than later years. For the first time, current pensioners are now no more likely to be living in poverty than people still in work, they have legal protection against age discrimination and more support from a greatly improved health service. For those of us in work or looking ahead to retirement, the opportunity and choice on how and when to do so, has been significantly widened by Labour ending the work‐retirement cliff‐edge with a flexible retirement age and scope to draw a pension while still working of lump sum payment if retirement is deferred. It remained incomplete and not yet fully comprehensive but with Labour in government, we also led a revolution in the philosophy of care, from the ethic of aid to ethic of independence and of rights. We created personal budgets and direct payments, aiming to give adults choice, control and independence over the care they receive. We promoted greater health and social care integration through Care Trusts and proposed new statutory duties for integration. We created and set up thousands of dignity champions to promote respect and dignity in the treatment and care of older people in the community, hospitals and residential care. And we asked the Law Commission to review social care law and propose ways of rationalising the current complex systems. So there’s a good deal during our period of Labour government we can reflect on. But we also fell short in some areas. In place of fear For too long, we believed because we were tackling the fear of elderly poverty, and because we were radically improving the services offered by the NHS, we were dealing with the main concerns of existing and future pensioners. But fear of old age has not gone away. Fear we’ll need care which won’t be good enough; fear our savings will be wiped out; fear we can’t insulate ourselves or our families from such risk; fear of losing our homes, of being a burden on our families or being left in isolation or neglect. A society with such endemic fear of becoming elderly is not a society of which any of us can be proud. We must aim to see the next and future generations free from the fears of growing old, able instead to look forward to a fulfilling later life.