Residential Care

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is absolutely evident that the care homes are facing an existential problem. Their costs have increased by 30% in the last year with the introduction of the national living wage, and their profits have significantly reduced. Some 1,500 homes have closed over the last six years. There is a major problem going on, and it is not good enough to exhort local councils to pick up the gap when their funding has been severely curtailed, which is also not helping care homes. When will the Government get a grip of this very serious crisis?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I am pleased that this Government have introduced the national living wage, which is supported, I believe, across this House and the other place. The noble Baroness is quite right that there is an impact on social care home providers, many of the staff of which are paid at that level. The truth is that there is a cost pressure, of course, in the social care sector—that is one of the reasons that the precept is rising quicker than it would have done otherwise—and the better care fund has been created to support more care provision in the appropriate setting that people want to have it in.