Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Poulter]

I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has done on the early years, and there are many good things in that manifesto. That is why we are investing in an additional 4,200 health visitors by 2015 and why we are supporting the most vulnerable families by increasing to 16,000 the number of families that will be supported by family nurses by 2015. A lot of investment is going into early years, which pays back to the Exchequer and gives much better care to families, too.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

T3. Wirral council has said that anybody who wants to be involved in providing social care must show their commitment to the ethical care charter. Will the Minister congratulate leading councillors Phil Davies and Chris Jones on taking this initiative, which includes a move away from zero hours contracts? Will he say specifically what conversations he has had with the Local Government Minister and with Treasury Ministers about making sure that each and every local authority has sufficient funds to fulfil their legal obligations in care services?

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

I pay tribute absolutely to that local initiative, which is exactly the sort of direction we are going in. I have made the point several times that we cannot get great care on the back of exploiting workers. The idea that people should not be paid while they are travelling from one house to another is, in my view, unacceptable. When employers and care providers breach the minimum wage legislation, we should be absolutely clear that that is completely unacceptable. To ensure great care, the Government are introducing in 2015-16 the £3.8 billion integrated transformation fund, which will pool resources between the NHS and social care to ensure that we shift the focus to preventing ill-health and deterioration, and I think that that can make a real difference.