Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 64
64
Rejected
Domiciliary care workers frequently work below minimum wage due to unpaid travel time.
Conclusion
It is completely unacceptable that the practice of not paying for travel time means that some domiciliary care workers are effectively working for less than the minimum or living wage. The Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, with the support of HMRC must re-examine sector-specific guidance to address complexities in national minimum wage and national living wage guidance for the care sector, and reissue new, clarified guidance to employers and employees. The HMRC National Minimum Wage / National Living Wage enforcement body must be proactive in ensuring that all domiciliary care workers are receiving at least the minimum wage or living wage for all the time they spend working, including time spent travelling to appointments. (Paragraph 212) 66 Workforce: recruitment, training and retention in health and social care
Government Response Summary
The government disagrees that new guidance is required on travel time, stating that current legislation already entitles social care workers to be paid for time spent travelling between appointments and that HMRC proactively enforces minimum wage compliance.
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
Responses 62–64 have been grouped. Local authorities are best placed to understand and plan the care and support needs of their local population. That is why, under the Care Act, local authorities are tasked with the duty to shape their care market to ensure a diverse range of high quality, sustainable, person-centred care and support services are provided. This includes planning the balance of services which should be directly provided by the local authority or contracted to external care providers. We disagree with the conclusion (recommendation 62) that social care is ‘chronically underfunded’. Sustained government investment has helped local authorities steadily increase their spending on adult social care, which reached £21.4 billion in 2021/22. This is an average increase of 2.5% per year in real terms since the introduction of the Care Act 2014. The Local Government Finance Settlement for 2022–23 made available an additional £3.7 billion to councils through Local Government Finance Settlement in 2022/23, including over £1 billion of additional resource specifically for social care. In the Autumn Statement we announced that we are making available up to £2.8 billion of additional funding in 23–24 and up to £4.7bn in 24–25 to support adult social care and discharge. This includes £1 billion of new grant funding in 23–24 and £1.7 billion in 24/25, further flexibility for local authorities on council tax, and having heard the concerns of local government, savings from delaying the rollout of adult social care charging reform from October 2023 to October 2025. As always though, the Government will continue to work closely with local authorities to understand the pressures Local Authorities’ and the social care sector are facing. The choice of commissioning model is for Local Authorities to determine, within their statutory responsibilities. We disagree with the conclusion of recommendation 63; as above, the government has provided sufficient funding to meet these duties. We disagree with recommendation 64 that new guidance is required on travel time. All social care workers are entitled to be paid at least the National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage for the work that they do. Time spent caring for clients, travelling between appointments, and waiting to start the appointment must be included in the pay calculation. Recommendation 65. New regulations should be introduced by 2023 in which care workers initially employed on zero-hours contracts must be offered a choice of contract after three months of employment. The new regulations should state that domiciliary care workers must be paid for their time spent travelling between appointments, and that time allocated for travel and care must be clearly set out in the contracts of domiciliary care workers. (Paragraph 213)