Social Care

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

I very much thank the hon. Lady for that clarification.

Our funding increases have gone into initiatives such as the better care fund, which provides a mechanism for local authorities and clinical commissioning groups to pool budgets for the purposes of integrated care.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Caroline Dinenage]

I hope my hon. Friend will not mind, but I want to make a little progress. The fund has helped to join up health and care services so that people can manage their own health and wellbeing, and live independently in their communities for as long as possible.

Another area where we have made significant progress is quality and safeguarding. The Care Act 2014 placed adult safeguarding on a statutory footing for the first time and established a national threshold that defines the care needs that local authorities must meet. This eliminates the postcode lottery of eligibility across England. Last year, local authorities in England advised more than 500,000 people how to access services to meet their care needs—this includes services provided by leisure, housing, transport and care providers, as well as voluntary groups.

Everyone is entitled to, and deserves, quality care, and we are working to improve the terms and conditions for people accessing care, to ensure that their rights are protected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure indeed to speak in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), and all the other contributions that have been made. In the brief time that I have, I wish to start by speaking about my own experience and why I am so passionate about this subject. I am one of the one in six people to whom the Minister referred when she talked about carers. I am a carer for my elderly mother who has dementia, so many of these problems touch me and my family quite personally. I totally recognise the situation that we face up and down the country. My own mother is receiving excellent care in Cumbria. I am delighted to pay tribute to the carers in Cumbria who are doing a fantastic job looking after her in a very challenging situation.

Closer to home, in Redditch, I recognise the importance of getting care right in my constituency. I have taken a close personal interest in the care that is available in my own home town. I have seen some amazing examples of care—whether it is at the Dorothy Terry House, Stonebridge or Brambles. In all those places, I have seen staff go above and beyond to care for elderly people at a very difficult and challenging time in their lives. That is really important and it is something that the Government are getting behind.

We have heard much criticism of the Government from Opposition Members. It is very difficult to take that on board when we all know how difficult the situation was when we came into office. To put the matter into perspective, I had a meeting with Worcestershire County Council just this week, and I discovered that the care of some people in Worcestershire costs £38,000 a year. I am sure that every Member will recognise that that is a lot of money. We all want to provide the best care for our constituents. That is what we all came into politics for. I resent the accusation that we do not care and that we do not want to get that right. We passionately want to get it right. We know that our constituents deserve that; people in Redditch deserve it and demand it. It touches all our hearts when we see people being failed by the system.

At the same time, we need to have a realistic debate about where the £38,000 comes from. We sometimes hear from the Opposition that, in the words of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), it is wrong to ask hard-pressed local council tax payers to pay. Well, if money is to be found, the only place that it is going to come from is tax payers—the tax payers in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, and up and down the country—and we are all mindful of that. The economic argument therefore has to be at the heart of what we are doing.

The Minister for Care has just returned to her place. I commend her for showing real leadership on this issue. Like the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who has just left her place, I am a member of the all-party parliamentary group on carers, and I attended the meeting, as did the Minister. We all heard the stories from the carers, which were similar to the stories that we hear from our families and constituents. This Government and the Minister have shown considerable commitment, and real care and compassion towards getting this right. I also commend Carers UK, which is behind the excellent APPG, for its work; it really celebrates unsung heroes in our communities.

The Minister is going above and beyond to put into practice a system that can be long-term, sustainable and, most importantly, funded. She is aware that there has to be money going into the system. Money has to come from somewhere, and the only place it can come from is taxes. It is therefore important that we get behind the leadership of the Health and Social Care Secretary, who has shown a dedication to bring together the health and social care sectors. That is the only way that we will solve the problem.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) said, there has to be cross-party consensus on this matter. We cannot descend to the pitiful levels seen in the general election when the Conservative party tried to have a grown-up conversation about one of the most difficult issues in our society—dementia. [Interruption.] Whatever Opposition Members are saying from a sedentary position, they know that the debate then really frightened and upset some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but I am going to focus on the experience in my constituency.

The Government are putting a lot of money into public services, which help people every single day of their lives. I have seen evidence of that in my constituency, where £29 million is on its way to the Alexandra Hospital and the Worcestershire Royal Hospital, which serve my constituents in Redditch. Joining up hospital care will of course help with some of the issues around delayed transfers of care. It will also aid the elderly and frail unit to help people who are most in need of both health and social care.

I recommend that the Government take forward the consultation as soon as possible. Today’s debate has been excellent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Gwynne]

The Government need to decide their position, but there are examples across the world of how adult social care can be funded. We need to make sure we get a system that works for England.

I also pay tribute to the workforce and carers. They do not just need platitudes from us in the House; they need the Government and politicians on their side.

This is the second time we have had to call an Opposition day debate on this issue, following the Government’s lack of action on social care. In our debate last October, there was broad agreement across the House, as there has been more or less today, that reform of social care was a priority, but here we are, six months later, and little has changed. Last month, we heard the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care tell the British Association of Social Workers that he accepted his share of responsibility for the lack of progress since the Conservatives entered government in 2010.

The social care Green Paper, due this summer, has faced substantial delays. We need a commitment from the Government that it will not be delayed any further. There is only so much longer that the sector can wait. Let us remember that in January there was hope that the Government would place an extra focus on social care after the Department of Health was rebranded, but then, shortly afterwards, in what sounded like a tribute act to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government told a packed LGA conference—I was there—that

“nothing has changed, nothing has changed”.

Confusion still reigns, and it is true: nothing has changed. This confusion means that 1.2 million people are being denied the support they need.

Let us look at what the cuts mean. According to its director of adult care, social care provision in Northamptonshire County Council—a Conservative council —is

“on the verge of being unsafe”

as a result of the cuts. That council has effectively been the first in England to declare insolvency. According to the director, the additional funds in the local government finance settlement will have “little impact” on the county’s problems, and I fear that that is right, but the Minister will be aware of the widespread fear that what has happened in Northamptonshire could happen again elsewhere. Mark McLaughlin, who was appointed from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in December to oversee Northamptonshire’s finances, has warned that all top-tier local authorities will soon face similar issues. Then, only last week, we heard that Worcestershire County Council, the Conservative-run local authority in the constituency of the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, had buried a report expressing urgent concern after rising costs, including the cost of adult social care, had forced the council to use more than half its reserves in the past five years. The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy expects the growth in demand to result in a budget deficit of £60.1 million by 2020-21.

[Rachel Maclean]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Gwynne]

No, I will not. Well, I will, because it is the hon. Lady’s local council.

[Rachel Maclean]

Worcestershire County Council covers the whole of my constituency, and I am aware of the concerns that the hon. Gentleman has raised. I want to respond to them, because I too have been worried about the position, as many other people naturally are. I met the chief executive and the leader of the council to address this very issue, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that they have a sustainable plan to deal with it. However, I will of course keep it under review, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising it.