Barbara Keeley speech to Labour Party Conference

Barbara
Keeley MP, Shadow Cabinet Member for Mental Health and Social Care, speaking
at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton today, said:

***CHECK
AGAINST DELIVERY***

Conference,

It is an honour to close this
debate as Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Member for Mental Health and Social Care

I am proud to have this role
in a Labour party that understands how vital Mental Health and Social Care
services are. And that makes protecting these services a major priority.

And it’s even more important
when we see the crisis the Tory Government has created in both social care and
mental health.  A crisis made in Downing Street

They are failing people
across the country, failing those who need care and their families, failing
unpaid family carers and failing hundreds of thousands of care workers.

People are now going without
the care they need. Nearly half a million fewer people getting publicly-funded
care since the Tories came to office. Over a million older people with unmet
care needs, many of them isolated and lonely

But this Tory Government
isn’t just failing social care users, it’s failing their families too. With
hundreds of thousands of unpaid family carers struggling to balance work and
care. It’s failing hundreds of thousands of care staff, because under the
Tories too often they are under-paid, under-trained and under-valued.

Caring staff who are forced
to work on zero-hours contracts, denied pay for travel time, underpaid for
sleep-in shifts, with care visits of just 15-minutes. Prevented from giving the
quality of care which people deserve

And the Tory Government is
failing children and young people in need of mental health services, denied
treatment due to Tory cuts. Young people told they are not thin enough to be
treated for an eating disorder. Children who have self-harmed being turned away
unless they have made a serious suicide attempt.

And thousands of people in
mental health crisis being sent hundreds of miles from their families just to
get the treatment they need. Mental health services for young people that are
now so poor, a High Court Judge had to tell Jeremy Hunt that this country:
would have “blood on its hands” if suitable care could not be found for
a suicidal teenage girl.

Conference, it’s time for us
in the Labour Party to say that this is not good enough.

Not good enough that care
quality has fallen, with one in four services now failing on safety grounds.

Not good enough that
thousands of vulnerable people are stuck in hospital for weeks or months,
because there is no care for them at home or no place in a care home.

Not good enough that last
winter the British Red Cross talked of a humanitarian crisis that saw people
sent home from hospital without clothes, people falling and not being found for
days, people going unwashed because there are no care services to help them to
wash.

This Social Care Crisis was
made in Downing Street. A crisis made by a Tory Government cutting billions of
pounds from council budgets. And by Tory Ministers failing to find the extra
funding needed for social care

And then during the Snap
General Election, Theresa May announced her solution to the crisis would be a
new tax on care. Dubbed the “Dementia Tax”, hitting people who need care even
harder. Making people use the value of their homes to pay for their own home
care

Such a failing and toxic
policy that Theresa May announced a U-turn on it within 4 days. And then the
Tories quietly dumped their policy. But in its place, the Tories now have
nothing to say on the future funding of social care. They just promise a consultation
and a Green Paper.

And on the crisis in mental
health for children and young people, they also promise only a Green Paper.

Conference, Labour will fill
the Tory policy vacuum. We will show that we are the party that values social
care and mental health. At the election, we pledged an extra £8 billion for
social care in this Parliament, with an extra £1 billion this year to deal with
the Tory crisis.

This would have delivered:
paying a real living wage to care staff, paying them travel time and letting
them choose regular hours; finally ending inadequate 15-minute care visits and
ensuring free end of life care.

And Conference, Labour believes funding must be found to pay care
staff properly for sleep-in shifts.

And Labour will support family carers. We have pledged to increase
the carers allowance for unpaid carers to at least the same rates as
Jobseeker’s Allowance. A small first step to recognise the value of the work of
unpaid family carers.

And Conference, a Labour Government will build a National Care
Service. A service in which we pool the risk of high care costs, so that no-one
is faced with catastrophic costs as they are now.

In its first years, our National Care Service will receive an
extra £3 billion in public funds every year. Enough to place a cap on what
individuals have to pay towards care. Enough to raise the asset threshold for
paying for care. Enough to provide free end of life care

To act on our pledge, we will invite an independent, expert panel
to advise us on how we move from the current broken system of care to a
sustainable service for the long term.

In mental health, we will increase the amount we spend on services
for children and young people. We will ring-fence mental health budget,s so
that money isn’t siphoned off by other parts of the NHS. We will bring an early
end to patients being sent hundreds of miles for mental health treatment. And
we will offer school-based counselling for young people in every one of our
high schools.

Conference, under the Tories we have seen years of neglect of care
needs. Neglect of older people. Of younger people. Of vulnerable disabled
people.

This Tory Government has no solution to the problems it has
created. Only Labour will end this crisis made in Downing Street. Only Labour
will bring hope to those in need of care and those who care for them

And only Labour will build care services fit for the many. Not the
few.