Local Government and Social Care Funding

Debate between Toby Perkins and James Brokenshire

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I am working closely with the Secretary of State for Education as we look towards the next spending review. I will come on to the support that is being provided for adults’ and children’s social care, as well as how we are investing further on a number of other fronts. Therefore, we have recognised and reflected on a number of the pressures that we have seen. Clearly, in the further review of relative needs and resources, and as we look towards the next spending review, I will look at the data and the evidence very closely and carefully.

[Toby Perkins]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[James Brokenshire]

I will give way one last time and then I will make some progress.

[Toby Perkins]

I am grateful. One thing that has been missing from the debate so far in terms of social care is that the vast majority of domestic visits are carried out by employees of private sector companies, as opposed to employees of local authorities, because most of these services have been outsourced. Huge numbers of those companies are going bust. It surely shows the Secretary of State that the system is unsustainable when 100 care homes have gone bust in the last couple of years.

[James Brokenshire]

The Minister for Care, who is sitting on the Bench next to me, says that the number of providers is going up. I can assure the hon. Gentleman about the steps that we are taking in conjunction with the Department of Health and Social Care; the assurances; the quality work that colleagues across Government support and strengthen; and the arrangements that we put in place to step in when there are failures in the market and a failure of supply in relation to a particular provider. When we look at a number of these examples, we can see the work that has gone in to make sure that they are dealt with effectively.

It is about the quality of service. When we look at the broader issues of social care, which many Members across the House have rightly touched on, the focus is on the delivery of care and the delivery of outcomes. Simply spending money is not the answer in terms of delivering the high-quality care and the outcomes that some of the most vulnerable in our society need.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Lady must equally reflect on the fact that the Labour Opposition voted against a real-terms increase in the core spending available to local authorities this year. That included the additional funding for health and for adult and children’s social care. We recognised the pressures and made the right judgments in respect of the pressures that councils explained to us. The Opposition may wax lyrical about funding pressures, but their own councils are not even helping themselves.

The Opposition have some front to claim to be the champions of local government and localism. I took the time to read the shadow Secretary of State’s recent speech to Labour’s local government conference this year, and it contained some big and bold claims. It is just a shame that they were not backed up by reality. He said that Labour was the party of devolution. I must congratulate him on his selective memory. If I remember correctly, it was his party that, after 13 years, left the UK one of the most centralised countries in Europe. It took the Conservatives in government to roll back the era of centrally imposed targets and the tick-box culture imposed by the Labour party, and it is this Government who have put the public finances back on track and cleared up the mess we inherited from Labour.

[Toby Perkins]

I am sure the Secretary of State would not want people watching this debate to be misled by what he has just said about police funding. He knows as well as all of us that the reason Labour voted against the spending plans for the police was that we were proposing far greater spending on the police. That is why Labour Members voted against what we saw as his derisory offer to our desperately under-resourced police services.

[James Brokenshire]

We have given significant investment to the police. Indeed, the Chancellor has made further commitments on some of the most acute pressures that we know are being experienced. I was actually talking about the local government settlement, rather than the police settlement, which was dealt with separately. However, we made a commitment to providing additional resources, and we are backing the police to deal with the issues of crime.