Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the future level of demand for social care; and what steps he is taking to ensure that that level of demand can be met.

Social care continues to be a key priority for the Government.

The Spending Review as a whole looked at the pressures on local government over the Spending Review period and particular attention was paid to adult social care services. Spending Review decisions on social care services took into account a range of financial and economic factors, including independent academic modelling of future demand for services.

As a result of the Spending Review announced in November 2015, the Government is giving local authorities access to up to £3.5 billion of new support for social care by 2019/20. This should mean local government has access to the funding to increase social care spending in real terms by the end of the Parliament.

In addition the current Relative Needs Formula does take into account demographics and seeks to measure need for state-funded care, and thus takes into account population need, the proportion of the population who are below the income and wealth means test threshold and the level of informal care support available.

The Department has commissioned a review of the formulae that we use for the Relative Needs Formula. This review is so that we can incorporate more recent and detailed data and statistical techniques. The researchers are currently writing up the research and this will be published in due course.