F30: A More Caring Society

Submitted by: Federal Policy Committee.
Mover: Baroness Jolly (Chair of the Policy Working Group).
Summation: Daisy Cooper MP (Spokesperson for Health and Social Care).

Conference believes that:

1. Social care is an essential service, comparable to healthcare or education.
2. Everyone has a right to access high quality care, regardless of their ability to pay.
3. Carers, paid and unpaid, deserve a fair deal.

Conference condemns a string of broken Conservative promises on social care, including:

1. Boris Johnson's 2019 promise that no one should have to sell their home to pay for their care, when many people will have to do just that.
2. Watering down their commitment to the cap on lifetime care costs making it harder for poorer people to afford the cost of care.
3. Failing to implement the provisions of the Care Act since 2015.
4. In 2019 committing to a cross-party consensus on social care, and refusing any meaningful engagement with other parties.

Conference therefore endorses policy paper 148, A More Caring Society, in particular its proposals to:

1. Ensure everyone has access to social care, regardless of their ability to pay by introducing Free Personal Care, based on the system introduced in Scotland by the Liberal Democrat-Labour government.
2. Build on the Liberal Democrat-led Care Act to move towards full personalisation of social care services so people have choice and control over the way their care is planned and delivered.
3. Move towards a preventative approach to social care, so people can stay in their own homes for longer.
4. Introduce a National Care Agency, which will set national standards and give the social care sector long term leadership.
5. Deliver effective integration of health and social care services by:
   1. Putting people first over institutional restructuring.
   2. Empowering local government to integrate services from the bottom up, rather than from the top down.
6. Introduce a long-term plan for the social care workforce, including:
   1. Introducing a real living wage for care workers.
   2. Investing in skills, professionalisation and accreditation of the workforce.
   3. Replicating NHS pay bands with clear career progression for social care workers.
   4. Introducing a national register of care workers and the creation of a college for social care comparable to the Royal Colleges for nursing and midwives.
7. Deliver a fair deal for unpaid carers by:
   1. Adding being an unpaid carer to the list of protected characteristics under the Equality Act.
   2. Providing unpaid carers with greater rights in the workplace and more broadly, for example, the right for employees to take one week's unpaid carer's paid leave each year.
   3. Introducing a range of financial benefits to those providing care.
   4. Improve how government departments and public service providers communicate and work together to support unpaid carers.
   5. Increasing the training and accreditation of skills available to unpaid carers.
   6. Giving all young carers a legally enforceable 'Education Guarantee' and a right to a normal childhood.

Conference also reaffirms pledges in motion Standing Up for Unpaid Carers (March 2021) to support unpaid carers.

Applicability: England only; except 7., which is Federal.

Mover: 16 minutes combined; movers and summation of any amendments: 4 minutes; all other speakers: 3 minutes. For eligibility and procedure for speaking in this debate, see page 9 of the agenda.

The deadline for amendments to this motion , is 13.00 Monday 5 September, see page 12 of the agenda. Those selected for debate will be printed in Conference Extra and Monday's Conference Daily. The deadline for requests for separate votes is 09.00 on Sunday 18 September, see pages 8-9 of the agenda.

In addition to speeches from the platform, voting members will be able to make concise (maximum one minute) interventions from the floor during the debate on the motion. See pages 8 and 10of the agenda.