With a General Election on the horizon, Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK, lays out her thoughts on what the new government’s manifesto should encompass to support an aging and diverse population.
There will be a General Election this year, almost certainly in the autumn, and possibly on the 14th November if you believe the pundits. As ever, this nationwide election will be a good opportunity to capture the attention of politicians on all sides, because it’s a time when they are more interested than usual in looking outwards and engaging, to win friends and, ultimately of course, votes.
At Age UK, we especially want the next Government to take action so that older people’s views and experiences are heard more loudly by policymakers, and their needs better understood. There were lots of lessons from the pandemic but one of the most important for us is that when the chips were down at a time of crisis, there weren’t enough influential people in Whitehall who knew enough about older people’s lives. As a result, some bad decisions were made that contributed to their enormous death toll. I am thinking, for example, of the decision early on to discharge older people from hospital into care homes, without knowing whether they were infected with COVID-19 or not. There were also instances of blanket ‘Do not Attempt Resuscitation’ Orders being put in place, and of local policy decisions that no older care home resident was to be admitted to hospital, for any reason.
So to address these failings Age UK is asking for an Older People’s Commissioner for England to be appointed – this is one of our key manifesto asks at the coming election. They would be independent of Government but would have proper legal status and powers. Their primary role would be to help project older people’s own views and voices to decision makers, but they would also be a powerful advocate in the corridors of power. How do we know this? Because it is what the two UK Commissioners in post, in Wales and Northern Ireland, already do. They make a real difference in their countries and we’d like to see the same here.
However, we do not think a Commissioner for Older People in England is enough – we want the next Government to appoint a Minister for Older People too. After all, older people comprise about a quarter of our total population, so it seems bizarre there is no single Minister, supported by a group of officials, to think about what they need, or to scrutinise what other Government departments are doing which might impact on them, for good or ill. Policy on older people is very poorly joined up in England and the absence of a dedicated Minister helps explain why.
The postholders would also likely challenge the misconception that older people are all the same and can be treated as all the same. When older people are considered by policymakers at all they are often lumped together, but if you think about it that’s absurd. The issues for someone in their late sixties can be very different to those for another in their nineties. The same is likely to be true of an older person from a BME community in the inner city, as opposed to a White older person in a profoundly rural area. So it’s not just that policymakers need to know more about older people, they need a more nuanced understanding as well.
The next General Election will be the first one after the pandemic, and with all the pain and heartache older people experienced it would be good for something positive to come out of it. An Older People’s Commissioner for England, and a Minister for Older People in Westminster would fit the bill for me.
@Care_Abrahams @age_uk
