Birmingham Salon

Wed, Aug 21 2024 01:14 | Permalink

 

The state of the state

Saturday 12th October, 1.00 pm - 5.00 pm

Arthur Sullivan Hall, Birmingham & Midland Institute

Tickets £15 plus EventBrite fee

Please book via Eventbrite

1.15 pm - 2.45 pm
The state of care

Shortly after being elected, the Labour government announced they would not proceed with implementing the Dilnot recommendations to cap the costs of social care and increase the assets threshold for for cut-off of state support from £23,250 to £100,000. This did not attract the same level of outcry as the cut to the Winter Fuel Allowance. But the commission headed by Dilnot made these recommendations a decade ago, and it seems they keep being labelled as too difficult to implement. The Chancellor blamed the hole in government finances for her decisions, and councils raised objections that the costs being capped would bankrupt them. Arguably, as these reforms would still leave those going into care homes with the "hotel costs" of their food, housing, and heating, the impact they might have had would be modest.

Meanwhile, there is a crisis in recruiting care workers with over 130,000 vacancies unfilled as of July this year. Pay levels are blamed. Gaps in caring are filled by relatives in many cases, often giving up much better levels of income to live on the paltry Carer's Allowance of £81.90 per week to ensure their loved ones have the kind of proper attention that three or four rushed care calls per day, or that being one of a large number of occupants in a care home, fails to provide. The recent priority for pay increases in the Health and Social Care Sector has been the junior doctors, with promises also of overtime payments for GP surgeries to help get the waiting lists down. Maintaining good health should have a positive impact on keeping the elderly and disabled out of the care system for longer. But with old age, and with certain disabilities, there is only so far this path can be taken. 

Successive reports, one by Lords and Commons Family and Child Protection Group in 2023, and another from an investigation by The Independent in April this year, found vulnerable and elderly people neglected and abused in hospital and other care settings, denied treatment, and administered drugs such as morphine and Midazolam with withdrawal of food and water, which appeared to be exactly the same combination of interventions as the Liverpool Care Pathway which was officially withdrawn in 2014.

The state appears to be failing our elderly and vulnerable, and their carers. 
Is it because their needs are increasingly complex and potentially expensive, with more of us living to an older age with several health conditions, that the delivering of consistently good care seems too challenging? On the other hand, an over-reach of state bureaucracy gets between those in care and their loved ones. As the Covid Inquiry Scotland has heard, the restrictions imposed on visiting care homes during the Covid pandemic are the most recent example of this. They had significant negative effects on the health and life expectancy of those in care, depriving them of crucial contact with family, who were not just visitors but essential care givers, and who were left "excluded, powerless, and without locus". How do we get the right care and support for our loved ones and what role should the state play?

Speakers
Amanda Hunter, Together Cabinet Member for Health and Social Care
Chris Akers, care sector manager, writer, and podcaster 

Chair: Rosie Cuckston

Reading

When End of Life Care Goes Wrong, report from the Lords and Commons Family and Child Protection Group, 2023

3.15 pm - 4.45 pm
Religion and the state: should Britain secularise?

Secularism is a political philosophy that addresses the relationship between religion and the state: put briefly, it advocates the separation of religion from the state.

One of the strongest selling points of secularism is that, by separating religion from the state, it protects every person’s freedom to choose what to believe or what not believe, within the law. This protects religious people from other religious people, as well as from people whose beliefs are not religious. And vice-versa. Secularism advocates that the state should not be involved in matters of religion and religion should not be involved in matters of the state. 
Gerard Phillips, Introduction to Secularism

In the 2024 General Election, there was the campaign for the Muslim Vote, which arguably succeeded in returning 4 independents to Parliament representing majority Muslim constituencies. There was also a Hindu manifesto, to which some sitting MPs publicly signed up during the election campaign. But religion has long been a part of UK politics. The Houses of Parliament are answerable to the Monarch, who in turn is the head of the Church of England. Prayers in the tradition of the Christian faith are said every morning when Parliament is sitting. In the House of Lords there are 26 seats for Church of England bishops.

Although everyone is supposed to obey the laws made by Parliamentary legislators, there are also some parallel institutions, ostensibly set up as routes for alternative dispute resolution, adjudicating on matters in relation to marriage and divorce with reference to religious belief. The founding this year of a Sikh court on a similar basis to Muslim sharia councils and Jewish beth dins caused an outcry from the National Secular Society.  These institutions have been accused of failing to provide people with information about their rights under British law in order to assert their preferences for how divorce should work in context of the religious faith. 

Other countries such as France, India, Mexico, Turkey and the USA have eschewed such links between church and state and have secular constitutions. In summary, a secular constitution can mean that the state and church are separate; the state doesn't legislate on the basis of any religion, or recognise, or financially support any religion. It also means a principal of religious toleration and freedom of religion. 

Because of what happened during the general election and because the rioting in various communities before and after the election suggests a rending of the UK’s social fabric, some have suggested that the British state becoming secular would send a clear message that no group is prioritised over another on religious grounds. It’s believed this would improve social cohesion and demote the culture wars, clearing a way to focus on the other significant economic and social problems we face.

But Britain is already socially secularist, and secularism doesn’t mean parties based on religion couldn’t form and stand candidates. Or that groups couldn’t campaign on issues from a religious perspective, such as abortion. Countries which take a secular approach seem to still be strongly subject to religious influence which dominates the lives of those who may not share those beliefs: Turkey is becoming increasingly Islamist, and it's been argued that the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on abortion due to a predominance of Catholic Supreme Court judges. Would a secularised British political system better protect our freedom and democracy, or is that too simple a prescription for what ails our society?

Speakers
Adrian Bailey, Birmingham Humanists
Justine Brian, Director, Civitas Schools

Chair: Simon Curtis

Reading:
Introduction to Secularism, Gerard Phillips, National Secular Society, 2011
Britain doesn't need a Sikh court, Hardeep Singh, Spiked Online, June 2024




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