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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anne Milton)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. Time is very short. I have about seven minutes, so I say up front that I will ensure that hon. Members receive a note to answer the questions that I will not be able to address. As the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) knows, this is an important debate. Like her, I would like to feel that this is about more than just press releases this week. Indeed, we praise carers this week. We should praise them every single week and every single day—those we know about and those we do not.
As the hon. Lady knows, in her constituency the Scottish Government have overall responsibility for devolved budgets and I am sure that she will therefore take up some of the issues with them. I note the cautionary tale about ring-fencing—mentioned by a few other hon. Members—and also tracking funding. Local authorities, however, have a duty to provide community care to those who meet eligibility criteria. The Department has set out an eligibility framework, which is important to bear in mind.
Who cares for the carers? Somebody first said that to me a very long time ago—in fact, when I was a district nurse. Those with caring responsibilities need care themselves, so that they can maintain their own health and well-being. Although it has not been mentioned today, the figures on the physical, mental and emotional health of carers are shocking.
Care and support services from both the statutory and voluntary sectors face challenges, irrespective of funding, like never before. Demographic changes mean that most of us will either become carers or need care. Some of us already care for children with disabilities and are often lifetime carers. Others care for partners as they grow older; some for ageing parents, neighbours or friends. Carers come in all shapes and sizes, and with different needs. It is important, when government at any level tries to meet the needs of carers, to recognise that they need specialist and personalised help, which is why personalised budgets are an important step.
I will run through some of the money that is coming through, so that hon. Members can raise, with their local authorities, what is happening to it. The spending review allocated an additional £2 billion by 2014-15 to support the delivery of social care. Some of that funding is already getting through. Some £162 million went in during January, which was money transferred from NHS budgets to support care services that improve people’s health and support carers. A further £648 million will pass to local government in England in the same way. A further £1.3 billion is now supporting the transfer of funding and the commissioning of learning disabilities services from PCTs to local councils, which will help. One hon. Member raised the issue of integrating services. That is very important. It applies to several Departments, and it is also true at local authority level.
Taken together, that is the biggest ever transfer of hard cash from health to social care. That is an important development and comes on top of the £530 million for social care this year from the Department of Health, which we rolled up into the Government grant formula. The Department for Education is providing more than £800 million in the next four years for short breaks—they are absolutely critical; respite breaks are a lifeline to parents of children with disabilities—as part of the new early intervention grant.
We recognise that the current funding system needs overhauling. We cannot avoid the wider challenges that demography brings us. My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) was 100% right about how the money is spent, and the hon. Member for Edinburgh East also mentioned monitoring. It is extremely important that we identify carers early, so that we can meet their needs early and they can continue to do what, essentially, they want to do, which is to care for those who live with them.
The Dilnot commission will report in July and will help us find new ways to modernise the funding of social care and ensure that it is more in line with the demands and expectations of the 21st century. The carers strategy, which we published in November 2010, sets out our priorities. Those priorities are important because we measure what central Government and local authorities do against them. They are: to support those with caring responsibilities to identify themselves as carers at an early stage, and involve them in designing local care provision and planning individual care packages; to enable those with caring responsibilities to fulfil their educational and employment potential, which is absolutely critical as young carers do not necessarily get to any step on any ladder as far as education and employment are concerned; to personalise support for carers, which is critical, and to support carers to maintain physical and mental wellness, because the physical burden of providing care for a friend or family member can be significant. Ideally, carers who are identified at an early stage can get the help that they need.
My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury mentioned the work that Sainsbury’s is doing. We should congratulate it. Of course, it is not a substitute for other things, but it is an important addition. Tomorrow morning, the Minister with responsibility for care services will launch a new e-learning tool for all GPs, developed in partnership with the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. That will be an important tool in enabling GPs to do what we need them to do. The Department of Health has made a further £1.5 million funding available for other initiatives to support GPs to help carers further. Alongside the carers strategy, we published examples of how the principles of personalisation have been applied locally, emphasising the value of finding ways forward that make sense and work best locally.
I have to say to Opposition Members that the country is financially where it is because that is where we found it when we took over from the previous Government. The hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) shakes her head. We cannot get away from the fact that we inherited a massive budget deficit that we are now having to tackle. Opposition Members look as if they are in denial. The hon. Lady, who is a sensible person, asked how we could look carers in the face, but how can members of the previous Government look carers in the face? We have been left with some difficult decisions. We have to ensure that every £1 of taxpayers’ money actually buys £1-worth of care, to support carers in the ways in which they need it.