Local Authority Grants: Impact of Cuts

Baroness Wilkins Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for securing the debate, and with it the opportunity to highlight the consequences of cuts in local authority funding for disabled people's essential support services. As other noble Lords have mentioned, there was a glimmer of light amid the cuts announced in the comprehensive spending review; namely, the extra funding for social care. However, as we have heard, we soon realised that the amount would be barely enough to sustain the current levels of spending, let alone to keep up with the increasing numbers of older people who require care and support to keep them going. It was even more worrying when it was made plain that the money would not be ring-fenced.

As we have heard, the Local Government Association has warned of a multimillion-pound shortfall in its adult social care budget. What safeguards will the coalition Government put in place to ensure that the money goes to the people for whom it is intended and does not disappear into the local authority budget? The fear is not unfounded, as local authorities can take their resources into account when determining the needs of a disabled person. As a result, in many places only the most profoundly disabled people qualify for help, which is means-tested.

There are other perverse consequences of the Government's measures. One of the most glaring is the removal of the DLA mobility component from people who live in state-funded residential care. It will cost local authorities money once their mobility needs are assessed. The money must come from the social care budget, so the council will have to further tighten the eligibility criteria, leaving more disabled and older people to fend for themselves, draining their means and exhausting their family members. Did the Government take this into account when they decided to remove the DLA mobility component? The decision was based on wrong assumptions, and it is telling that disabled people were not involved in making it.

Another measure is the closure of the ILF to new applicants, with the resulting expectation that local authorities will take up the slack. In practice, local authorities are prepared to fund their part of a care package, which would have been matched with ILF funding, but they are not prepared to increase it to take account of the closure of the ILF to new applicants. For example, a disabled man in his 30s living in Buckinghamshire would have received a care package of around £600 a week had the ILF still been open to new applications. Buckinghamshire County Council has decided that it is unable to increase its funding beyond £340 a week—a long way short of what the man would have received with ILF as well. As a result, he now has to manage without night-time care.

Disabled people are facing cuts of 20 to 30 per cent. This was covered by the BBC in its excellent “You and Yours” programme last week. People are being reassessed for personal budgets and finding that the amount they will receive is much less than they have been getting. For example, a disabled couple in Lambeth had their care package cut by 20 per cent from £6,025 per month to £4,900.

No doubt there is money to be saved by reducing the bureaucracy and duplication that comes with state interference, and with creative ways to help people become active citizens who will take responsibility for their own lives and communities. That is where the value lies in giving local people more control. They can identify where money is wasted—for example, on the many assessments that people have to go through because different departments in a council are involved and cannot work together on a single assessment. We hope that the right to control will change that practice. The bureaucracy that some councils have built around direct payments and personal budgets is mind-blowing. However, money that is invested in an accessible infrastructure—in lifetime homes and neighbourhoods, for instance—will earn itself back as councils have to make less separate provision for disabled people. Will this happen when local councils are looking for cuts in the short term?

In my own borough, the so-called Conservative flagship council of Hammersmith and Fulham states that it has “listened” to its residents in delivering year-on-year council tax cuts of 3 per cent through “efficiencies”. However, it did not spell out the consequences of the cuts. As we have heard, Hammersmith and Fulham embarked on its own comprehensive spending review long before the coalition Government did, and no doubt will set about implementing a further 26 per cent of cuts with gusto, and all in the name of efficiency.

Who is feeling the impact of this enthusiasm for efficiency? It is isolated old people, people with learning difficulties and disabled people generally—in other words, the poorest residents of Hammersmith and Fulham. The borough has redefined eligibility for homecare and has reduced shopping services, telling 89 year-olds that if they can phone the council, they can order their shopping themselves by phone. The council has nearly halved the take-up of the meals on wheels service. Because of cuts to borough funding, the local Age Concern has had to close down services, including a lunch club and its vital toenail-cutting service—a simple but essential key to continued mobility for older people. The local user-led disabled people's organisation, HAFAD—I declare an interest as its vice-chair—has lost funding for its welfare benefits service at a time when it is essential that disabled people, who are terrified about the benefits that they might lose and who are the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society, should be helped by the benefits that they need. All this is also happening before the rollout of the implications of the CSR.

Giving local councils more autonomy and local people more control should mean money flowing to services that meet the needs of local people, but we must ensure that it is not only those with money and clout whose needs are met. What about those people who are isolated by poverty and struggle unseen? In most areas their interests are voiced by the small, voluntary organisations and, as we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, they are the first to go to the wall when cuts are made. I ask the Minister what steps the Government will take to support these vulnerable local user-led organisations whose existence is vital in providing a voice to older and disabled people in their locality so that they can continue to provide essential information, advice and advocacy for people who need care and support.

Finally, I want to touch briefly on a matter which my noble friend Lady Thornton has helpfully trailed, and that is portability. Sadly, the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, who has raised the matter so eloquently in the House, is not able to be here today. Portability is being able to choose the locality where you live. Currently many disabled and older people are prevented from moving to another postcode because they cannot be sure that they will keep the care and support that they have qualified for. It means that they cannot move to get further education or to have a better chance of a job, nor can they move nearer their families, move away from an abusive relationship, or move out of residential care into the community. What an unbelievable waste of human and economic capital that is.

My time is running out but I wonder if, in all this gloom, the Minister would be willing to provide a small glimmer of hope by agreeing to meet the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and other interested Peers to discuss the issue of portability. The fear is that once the localism Bill gets to us, it may be too late. I hope she can give that commitment.