Hansard

I declare an interest in that I am a councillor. This is probably the final time that I will declare that interest. I also declare my financial contribution of the final year of my council salary that I made to Stirling Carers Centre, which is a wonderful organisation that supports young people who cope with the most unimaginable level of responsibility in their lives.

Alison Johnstone told us earlier that unpaid carers save the Scottish economy £10.8 billion every year. Carers allowance is a small recognition of the value of unpaid care work, but it is paid at far too low a rate and is subject to a set of hugely complex rules. Under carers allowance, caring for no less than 35 hours a week equates to £1.70 an hour at current rates. That drops to just pennies for carers who provide 24/7 care. No wonder many carers describe feeling insulted by the level of carers allowance that they receive.

I very much welcome the Scottish Government’s plans to increase the value of the benefit to match jobseekers allowance, at £73. However, JSA is intended to be a short-term payment, and about 90 per cent of claimants claim for only a matter of months. Recipients of carers allowance tend to claim for many years, and incur a range of additional costs in the course of caring. Carers allowance, which is formally intended only to replace income that is lost through the carer not being able to work, does not reflect that.

For these reasons, the Green Party’s Holyrood manifesto pledged to increase carers allowance by 50 per cent, to £93. I encourage the Scottish Government to consider a two-part benefit, as is advocated by Carers Scotland among others, which would replace lost income and cover additional costs, with a premium being available for people who care for more than one person.

However, that is not the only change that is needed. Carers allowance is riddled with complexities and unfairness. For example, if a person is paid carers allowance, the person whom they care for loses their severe disability premium in their applicable amount for means-tested benefits. That means that it may not always be financially worth the carer’s while to claim, which partly explains the low take-up. It would help enormously to ensure that the Scottish carers allowance does not count as income when benefits and care charges are being assessed.

I turn to the important role of the waged care sector and the contribution that dedicated workers make to the daily care of tens of thousands of people across Scotland. A few short years ago, we saw much criticism of the state of homecare services across the UK, but there was little, if any, consideration of the experiences of the people who work in the sector. In order to understand those experiences better, Unison launched a major survey of care workers and published a report entitled “Time to Care”. The report revealed the shocking state of the sector, with poor pay and working conditions driving down the morale of a dedicated but downtrodden workforce.

Four out of five workers experienced what is called call cramming, whereby appointments are stacked with not enough time to meet clients’ needs, or even to factor in travel from one appointment to the next. The frustration and shame of workers who were being forced to leave clients before their needs had been met was leading many carers selflessly to support clients in their own unpaid time.

The survey found that over half of workers were not paid for time between visits, which was potentially breaching minimum wage laws. More than half of workers were paid between the basic minimum wage and only £8 an hour. Many workers saw the impacts on their clients as they were switched from one worker to another, which caused distress, particularly among clients with dementia.

Added to those problems were a lack of formal routes through which to report clients’ concerns, little training on specific medical conditions and lack of contact time with fellow co-workers, so it is understandable that recruitment and retention was a major problem. For many people, a job in the supermarket was better paid, with better terms and conditions.

On the back of “Time to Care”, Unison launched the ethical care charter for councils to sign up to. It set a new minimum baseline for the safety, quality and dignity of care. It acknowledged that to deliver better services we need more sustainable pay, conditions and training for workers. The Scottish Government has moved on the living wage element of that by ensuring that since last year a budget has been delivered to pay adult social care workers the Scottish living wage. However, there are still questions about whether people who work in child social care are getting the living wage. I hear repeatedly, around the doors, anecdotal evidence that some care workers are not receiving the living wage, and I have been hearing concerns about the lack of contract monitoring of some councils. I would like the minister to address those points directly.

The ethical care charter needs to be implemented in full by every council in Scotland, so I congratulate North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire councils, which have signed up to do that. I pushed the charter hard in my council in Stirling, and although it has stopped short of signing up in full, it is 95 per cent of the way there. The remaining legacy contracts will be addressed in the months ahead.

Putting the needs of clients first in how services are timed and delivered, while supporting the training and support of care workers, matters. Applying a decent living wage of £9.20 an hour, ensuring sick pay and ending zero-hours contracts and unpaid travel time will build a workforce that is respected and valued for the incredible work that it does. Our carers, waged and unwaged, are unsung heroes. They deserve the support of us all in Parliament and in council chambers across Scotland.