Local Government Responsibilities: Public Services

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the statutory and broader local government responsibilities for public services, including social care.

In the coming weeks and months, it is right that the Government focus on the fight against coronavirus. Local government will be on the frontline of that fight. Local services, from social care and public health to bin collections and now, most importantly, support for volunteering, will help us to overcome the challenge.

It is a time of uncertainty for many people across the country, and the Government need to provide as much certainty as they can. One thing we know is that older people, and those with underlying health conditions, are at greater risk from coronavirus than the rest of the population, as is clear from the social distancing guidelines issued for those groups this week. That means that, in the coming months, social care will be more important than ever because it not only helps to keep hospital beds clear for those who need them, but touches the lives of some of the most vulnerable. Care staff, therefore, will often be on the frontline of our efforts to stop the spread of the disease.

We are particularly concerned about home careworkers, who might provide care for up to a dozen older and disabled people in their homes every day. We want all necessary measures to be taken to protect care staff and the people they work with. As with the NHS, an important part of the solution is personal protective equipment and measures for infection control.

Care providers will face extra costs due to the need for more personal protective equipment and for enhanced cleaning of care homes and people’s own homes, and other measures to minimise the spread of infection—for example, zoning some staff in care homes. Last week, I raised with Ministers the fact that providers have faced great difficulty in obtaining personal protective equipment, and that also applies to infection control products, hand wash and disposable hand towels.

The care sector is extremely worried about being able to get essential supplies such as personal protective equipment. Commissioners can mitigate that by funding the extra costs and by helping providers to access personal protective equipment, perhaps by using some of their own contracts. The Government need to give guidance to local authorities and care providers, however, on the provision and use of personal protective equipment for careworkers and on whether help with accessing supplies can be given to reduce the spread of coronavirus.

We have just had a debate on statutory sick pay, which is particularly important for care staff, who are on the frontline of the outbreak. If they are ill, it is vital that they follow the public health advice and self-isolate, but the reality, as we heard, is that many care staff, like other staff, cannot afford to do so. Even if they are eligible for statutory sick pay, which we do not think they all will be, it is only £94 a week. The Minister needs to set out now what the Government will do to ensure that no careworker has to choose between doing the right thing and facing overwhelming financial problems.

Care providers are also facing increased cost pressures due to staff self-isolating or being off sick. It is right that statutory sick pay will start at day one, rather than day four, but that will increase employers’ liability for statutory sick pay. Requirements for workers to self-isolate will further increase financial pressures on employers. Given that, in virtually all cases, care providers will have to backfill sickness absence to ensure the continued delivery of support, that represents a real cost pressure on providers. With local authority budgets stretched, how can they support care providers to provide for extra statutory sick pay, the cost of backfilling care staff and the personal protective equipment and other materials that will be needed to get through the crisis?

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling case for why the Government should announce specific support for the social care sector. I noticed yesterday that the Chancellor did not make specific reference to the social care sector which, as my hon. Friend points out, is in a fragile state and under enormous pressures. Is it not time for specific support for the social care sector to be announced?

[Barbara Keeley]

I agree with my hon. Friend. It is great to hear that the NHS will get what it needs, but what about the social care sector?

We know, as my hon. Friend just said, that many care providers were already on the brink of collapse. Many will not have reserves to fall back on. I ask the Minister, as my hon. Friend just has: what will the Government do to sustain care provision and ensure that care providers are able to carry on delivering care at this time?

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a good point about social care in the broader sense. I want to raise the needs of local charities, some of which provide social care, and others provide a range of other services. Does she know whether some of the funding that the Government have allocated to local authorities will be earmarked to support continued funding of those local charities and community groups, or whether that has not yet been considered?

[Barbara Keeley]

That is a very good question, and we should ask it in addition to the questions that I will ask, because the independent and voluntary sector is vital in our communities and in care provision.

I want to touch on the issues facing care homes across the country. We know that the Government are asking older people to avoid social contact for the next three months, but we need to be clear—clearer than we have been—about what that will mean for people in care homes. Will the Government recommend that all visits from friends and family be stopped until June? Can the Minister tell us what guidance on visits they are giving to organisations running care homes? Providers and their networks do not seem to have had any clarity yet.

The Care Quality Commission has announced a pause in its inspections, freeing up staff time to focus on care, but today it has published its independent review of Whorlton Hall. That was a shocking scandal. People with learning disabilities and autistic people and their families will want reassurances that, once this crisis passes, the CQC will focus its full efforts on ensuring that something like Whorlton Hall never happens again.

Many older and disabled people do not receive formal social care. Instead, they rely on unpaid friends and family. I know that many unpaid carers are worried that they will contract coronavirus or have to self-isolate and be unable to give the care they normally do. What steps should any unpaid carer who has symptoms of coronavirus take? If they are being asked to self-isolate, what alternative care can be provided at short notice? If someone cares for a person they do not live with, what steps can be taken if the carer has to self-isolate or if the Government have to further restrict travel, as many unpaid carers live some distance away from the people they care for?

Young carers—children and young people—may need more support than others in managing the changing situation in their lives, especially if their local supermarket or pharmacist does not have supplies. It is important that, if schools or years within schools close, it is understood which children within those schools are identified as young carers. It is often the case that a school or a teacher within a school is the only person who knows that one of their pupils is looking after someone at home. Schools could nominate a lead person to make regular contact with young carers during this difficult time when they are not in school.

Another major issue facing carers is the supply of medicines, hygiene products and food. Carers have to source supplies such as antibacterial wipes or disinfectant themselves. Unfortunately, we have seen panic buying of those goods, making them far harder to acquire. What can the Government and local authorities do to ensure that unpaid carers and the people they care for do not have to go without crucial supplies, including food?

The Government’s reasonable worst-case scenario implies that we can expect to see one in five workers off sick at the same time. There are an estimated 122,000 vacancies across social care currently—a workforce problem that we know forces existing care staff to cut visits short or work beyond their paid hours. It is understandable that people receiving care and unpaid family carers are very concerned about how care can be provided if we get to a situation where large numbers of care staff are off sick or self-isolating.

In the coronavirus Bill, the Government want to make changes to the Care Act 2014 to enable local authorities to prioritise the services they offer, in order to ensure that the most urgent and serious care needs are met, even if that means not meeting everyone’s assessed needs in full or delaying some assessments. I am sure that we will discuss those measures when we consider the Bill next week, but the guidance on the Bill says:

“Local authorities will still be expected to do as much as they can to comply with their duties to meet needs during this period and these amendments would not remove the duty of care they have towards an individual’s risk of serious neglect or harm.

These powers would only be used if demand pressures and workforce illness during the pandemic meant that local authorities were at imminent risk of failing to fulfil their duties and only last the duration of the emergency.”

I know that people who are worried about this will want to hear any further guidance on the circumstances under which the powers would be used. Finally, I want to touch on some of the issues facing specific groups who are receiving social care.

[Gareth Thomas]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way to me a second time. Is there not also a broader point about certainty of future funding for local authorities and certainty about which of the additional costs they face from coronavirus will be met by central Government going forward? My local authority, which is not by any definition well off, is concerned about when it will receive clarity from the Government on which costs it can reasonably expect Ministers to cover.

[Barbara Keeley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will need certainty about those things when we look at the coronavirus emergency Bill, which we will do shortly, but this lands on local authorities at a time when they do not have any certainty. There is much about their financial position that needs to be made clearer to local authorities. I also agree with my hon. Friend: my local authority has had budgets cut by more than 50% since 2010, and we were in what we were calling a crisis in social care even before this happened.

I want to talk more fully about people with dementia and people with learning disabilities. There are a million people with dementia in this country and many people with learning disabilities. Not all of them will be able to comprehend the importance of self-isolation and then act appropriately. What measures and guidance will the Government introduce to help people with learning disabilities or dementia to self-isolate? Many working-age people with disabilities may be more vulnerable. Conditions such as Down syndrome or multiple sclerosis could increase the risk of respiratory infection, and the guidance suggests that people with these conditions would self-isolate. Can the Minister tell us what financial support will be available for them and their families if they have to stop work to do that?

We understand that this is a difficult and challenging time for all, but the Government have talked of using volunteers in health and social care services. People with disabilities and older people who need care have some of the most complex care needs. How will the Government ensure that people with complex needs continue to receive the support and care they need to stay in their own homes?

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

In this crisis we need to make the most of volunteers and that spirit in the community of helping out, but at the same ensure that things such as Disclosure and Barring Service checks are done appropriately and that vulnerable people are kept safe from other risks, including those of unscrupulous interveners.

[Barbara Keeley]

I thank the right hon. Member for that intervention. I think most of us are concerned in our constituencies to ensure that we have enough people to help out, but do not have the wrong sort of people getting involved. We do not want to start seeing scams and people defrauded, because that would be a terrible way to proceed.

We need to look at how far we can stretch the idea that volunteers can help in health and social care, because in certain situations—for example, an elderly person with very poor skin condition, with sores, who needed particular lifting, or somebody who was PEG-fed, using percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy—we cannot even use DBS-checked volunteers.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

There are people who genuinely want to help and do their best for their community, but I am concerned to ensure that DBS checks are in place—an issue that has been alluded to—and also about infection control, which fits nicely with what my hon. Friend the shadow Minister has just said about some of the procedures that people may be asked to help with. There are real questions about the training and the infection control that need to be in place if we use volunteers.

[Barbara Keeley]

Very much so. I am following all the social media input from my constituents, and I am glad to see that people are very keen to help. However, we must be careful, because we are talking about very vulnerable people, often with complex care needs, and we do not want to put them into difficulties through the efforts of volunteers, so we need guidance on that point.

Let me turn to self-isolation. I had to self-isolate for five days last week, and I know it is not easy, but it will be particularly hard for people with anxiety disorders, who rely on a routine to cope. Both now and once we are on the other side of this, what support will the Government be offering to help address the mental health consequences of the pandemic and of self-isolation or shielding for long periods? I noticed in the media that there were programmes showing what is being done in Wuhan in China, with hundreds of counsellors talking to people on a phone helpline, talking them through the difficulties they were experiencing. I think we may have to be thinking about something like that. In particular, many older people are now looking at several months potentially locked down in their own home, so what can the Government do to ensure that those people do not become lonely and isolated, with all the mental health consequences that would cause?

The challenges facing local government over the coming months are not limited to social care. The Government finally published yesterday the public health grant for the next financial year. Between 2014-15 and 2019-20, budgets were cut by £870 million, although there has been an increase to the grant this year. While the publication of the allocations finally provides some certainty to local authorities, the reality is that their public health functions are likely to be focused on coronavirus for the foreseeable future. Public health services such as smoking cessation are vital to prevent people from acquiring long-term health conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which can make a future case of coronavirus more serious. Will the Minister commit to allocating further money to public health if local authorities need it to keep people safe during the crisis?

The other major area of concern is homelessness. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government announced a fund yesterday to help local authorities provide accommodation for homeless people who might have coronavirus, which is welcome, but given the scale of the homelessness crisis in this country, can the Minister tell us whether that fund will be topped up if needed? We do not want local authorities to have to ration support now because they think they might need some of it later.

I understand we are expecting a statement at 5 o’clock on education, and the Government are not yet closing schools—we may hear more at 5 o’clock—but we do see more teaching staff off work ill or self-isolating. Schools are being closed for certain years, and other closures look increasingly likely. I have seen that in my constituency. For many children, school is a place where they can get breakfast and free school meals. If children have to stay at home, they may go hungry. What support will be put in place to protect those children if schools are closed, whether that means providing food for them or ensuring that social services are monitoring their condition?

Lastly, I want to mention bins and waste collection. The safe handling of waste that could be contaminated by coronavirus will be a major challenge for public health and for the protection of the staff who work in that vital service. Will the Minister tell us what action is being taken alongside local authorities to ensure the continuity of waste collection services, given that the staff who work in those services will themselves be subject to illness and self-isolation?

We also need to think about council tax. If the Government are giving business rate relief for coronavirus, why not council tax relief for the general population? If people are out of work for an extended period, council tax is a big cost. Councils would need reimbursement for lost income, as they would with business rates. Additionally, we need councils to show some restraint with pursuing council tax arrears through the courts. Although loss of income for councils could be a very big issue at a time like this, depending on how long everything lasts, everything points to Government support and action for that. I should say to the Minister that I am happy to supply him with a list of all the questions I have asked, because it is very difficult for him to answer everything all in one go.

Coronavirus poses a unique challenge for this country. We will all need to work together to tackle it. The work that local authorities do will be central to addressing the crisis and will help to hold communities together as we do so. It will not be easy, and I am sure there are many issues we have not foreseen. I thank everyone working in local government and in social care and all our teachers and teaching staff, because they are a vital frontline service. I hope the Minister can reassure the House that local authorities will get all the help they need in the weeks and months ahead to tackle this crisis and to carry on providing the services that people rely on every day.

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[Luke Hall]

I reassure the hon. Lady that we are looking at speed and depth at all these issues to make sure that we get the approach right. Several hon. Members have rightly highlighted the fact that we are talking about protecting some of the most vulnerable people in our society, so of course we want to get that balance right. We are considering in detail how that is best achieved, but I will absolutely make sure that that point is taken away.

[Barbara Keeley]

I would just like to ask a further question on the protective equipment that we have just talked about. I am glad to hear that masks, hand sanitiser and any of the things that are needed are coming forward, because there has been a lot of concern in the care sector about it. I would like it to be a consideration that in some of the situations that care staff will be, they will need what is in very short supply in the NHS. They are going to need more, because it is not just a question of normal infection control. We need to protect the care staff themselves, because I think there is a very real fear that may cause more people to give up on the job if we are not careful about it. It is too risky for the staff to have that contact with maybe up to a dozen people in their homes every day. I hope we can expand our thinking to take into account that sometimes the more serious PPE that is used in hospitals will have to be used by care staff.

[Luke Hall]

I am glad the hon. Lady welcomes some of the immediate progress being made. She makes an important and serious point, which I will consider in depth. I am happy to discuss it with her in the days ahead.

We must also acknowledge that the crisis will not only put enormous pressure on our social care system and our most vulnerable people, but hit our local economies. We must play our part to protect those around us as well as to actively protect the local economies that underpin our communities. I will therefore set out measures the Government are taking to reflect that local priority.

Local venues, including pubs and theatres, are the pillars of local communities, and we understand the importance of giving them our wholehearted support in the weeks and months ahead. That is why we are giving all retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in England a 100% business rates holiday for the next 12 months and increasing grants to small businesses eligible for small business rate relief from £3,000 to £10,000; we are also increasing the planned rates discount for pubs to £5,000 as part of mitigating the social and economic effects of the virus.

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[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

May I first congratulate and thank hon. Members across the House for their valuable and important contributions to the debate? They have been largely co-operative and collaborative at a time of extraordinary emergency for our country.

I am sorry that I was not here at the beginning of the debate to hear the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) and the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall); like the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), I was in a Westminster Hall debate discussing the Greater Manchester spatial framework. It is a great pleasure to have the chance to close the debate.

I join my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State in reiterating the Government’s unwavering support for local authorities across the country in responding to the covid-19 emergency. Like other right hon. and hon. Members, I pay particular tribute to frontline staff and other council officers for their tireless efforts in reassuring residents, protecting the elderly and most vulnerable, and helping keep the public safe. Let me assure the House that the Government will continue to work hand in hand with local partners, including councils and local resilience forums, to assist in this vital work and ensure that communities receive the support and help they need during this unprecedented and challenging time.

Hon. Members across the House described powerfully the incredible work that their local communities and local public services are doing. Let me say, on behalf of the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how grateful we are for all the tireless work that people are already doing. I am particularly conscious of the vital contribution of local voluntary organisations, and I pay particular tribute to them, as other Members did. I was struck by what my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) had to say about the support the local volunteer organisation The Bus Shelter is providing.

Our responsibility in Government is to knit that work together into a national programme to ensure that all communities and all vulnerable people, wherever they may be, have access to the right support at the right time, and we will do that. We will take every step necessary to support local communities, local authorities, all public services and the myriad volunteers who are coming forward to help, as my hon. Friends the Members for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) and for Devizes (Danny Kruger) made clear.

We know councils need assurance from the Government that they will have the funding they need to play their crucial role in the coronavirus response, especially in providing social care services to those in greatest need, as a number of Members on both sides of the House have said. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has made clear, we will do whatever it takes—whatever it takes—to respond effectively. That includes making sure public services, including vital council services, have the money they need to respond. The Chancellor announced last week that £5 billion has been made available for the NHS, and more money has been made available for other public services, such as the half a million pounds made available to local authorities, with more to come if necessary.

We are urgently agreeing a funding package for councils, and we will make further announcements as soon as possible.

[Barbara Keeley]

The Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government said earlier that the Government will make sure that, whatever social care and the NHS need, they will get it. Will the Minister for Housing repeat that? That is an important thing to say. It is not just the NHS that needs funding; social care needs it, too.

Greater Manchester Spatial Framework and the Green Belt

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly) on securing this important and timely debate.

According to the 2019 draft of the Greater Manchester spatial framework—GMSF—Salford is to accommodate 16% of the overall housing requirement for the region. This allocation has risen compared with the 2016 draft, and Salford’s overall housing requirement is now second only to Manchester’s. The adoption of the GMSF in its current form would result in four sites being removed from the green belt in Salford—GM allocations 30, 31, 32 and 33—in order to deliver 2,350 homes and commercial space at Port Salford. All four green-belt sites allocated for development in Salford lie within my constituency, and my constituents have expressed a great deal of anger over plans in the GMSF to develop that green-belt land. I share their concerns and strongly oppose any loss of green-belt land in my constituency. I will briefly lay out why.

In July 2019, I presented a petition to the House signed by more than 1,000 local people objecting to GM allocation 31 in Boothstown. Green-belt land is precious in Salford, as it provides the green lungs for an urban city. It is vital that these green spaces are preserved in a city that has high levels of air pollution, low levels of physical activity and poorer health outcomes. I have objected to the two previous drafts of the GMSF because Salford has enough brownfield sites to satisfy the housing need outlined in the revised GMSF without the development of green-belt land, but today I will talk particularly about GM allocation 32—a proposal to build 1,600 homes on green-belt land north of Irlam station, in an area known locally as Chat Moss.

The 2016 draft of the GMSF recognised that

“the site has significant depths of peat…it still performs an important carbon storage function, and should be retained wherever possible.”

However, the 2019 draft of the GMSF removed that observation. I believe strongly that our mosslands should be managed and restored, to ensure that their carbon sequestration potential is realised. We should not allow pockets of this land to be lost for development.

[Sir Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West) (Con)]

Given the large sum of money that the Government allocated in the Budget just last week for the protection and restoration of peat mosses, it is surely absurd that we are still looking at building on peat mosses that are still in good condition when money is being allocated to restore ones that need to be improved.

[Barbara Keeley]

I absolutely agree. That is particularly relevant for Chat Moss because, for those who do not know it, large parts of the moss were destroyed, or nearly destroyed, by peat extraction. I fought that peat extraction and we won on that issue, so we should not be talking about losing any more peat. Some wonderful projects are restoring those lands affected by peat extraction, but let us not go back and do that again.

The land at Chat Moss is peatland, and its designation for development, interestingly, runs counter to certain policies. GM-S 2, on carbon and energy, encourages

“Increasing carbon sequestration through the restoration of peat-based habitats, woodland management and tree planting”.

GM-G 2, on developing a green infrastructure network, says we should

“Reduce carbon emissions, by sequestering and storing carbon, particularly in peat and trees”.

GM-G 10, on seeking a net enhancement of biodiversity and geodiversity, states that we should be

“Safeguarding, restoring and sustainably managing Greater Manchester’s most valuable soil resources, tackling soil degradation/erosion and recovering soil fertility, particularly to ensure protection of peat-based soils and safeguard ‘best and most versatile’ agricultural land.”

That last point is key, beyond the fact of the peatlands.

I have stated repeatedly that this land should be used in a sustainable way, but given the need for locally sourced food and fuel, which I think we will see much more of in the coming months, it would be much more productive and efficient to use the land for agriculture. The land has been recognised as grade 1 agricultural land—“best and most versatile”, flexible, productive and efficient, which can deliver food and non-food crops for future generations. That means that it is excellent-quality land with either no, or very minor, limitations for agricultural use. A range of agricultural and horticultural crops can be grown on this land, and yields are very high and less variable than from land of lower quality.

The mossland is also a tract of countryside of great value to those living in surrounding urban communities. In addition to its agricultural importance, it has great potential for informal recreation for those living in Salford, and it is important for nature conservation, particularly for bird life. For Members seeking to walk and maintain social distancing, it is possible to really get away from people when you are walking on Chat Moss. The loss of this land would set a worrying precedent. The framework states that remaining areas of moss land would be protected and preserved, but local people are sceptical of that claim.

The destruction of green-belt land is not the only thing drawing objections to the GM Allocation 32. Irlam is a town with one main access road, the A57, which connects Irlam to Eccles and the M60 in one direction, and Cadishead and the M6 in the other direction. It may no longer be true since I wrote this speech, but traffic is at a standstill on many days—more so when there is an event at the AJ Bell stadium; there may not be one of those for some time to come. If the development goes ahead, there are real fears that it could add at least 2,400 cars to what has been a gridlock in this area for years. Although we encourage people to leave their cars at home and use public transport, the Metrolink network does not get close to Irlam. Constituents describe local train services as appalling and a daily nightmare, and bus services have been severely cut.

It is important to view this alongside GM Allocation 33, the Port Salford extension. That is one mile away on the same A57 road leading in and out of Irlam, and that will in itself add hundreds of HGVs and transit vehicles to the local road network. In addition to the potential 2,400 extra cars each day, I cannot see how all of this works together to create a sustainable and greener environment for those living in Irlam and the neighbouring town of Cadishead. I have objected strongly and repeatedly to these aspects of the Greater Manchester spatial framework, because I have real concerns about these proposals for Salford. The framework earmarks substantial areas of green-belt land for large development and commercial space.

It is also essential that we have clarity from the Government on the basic housing figures that Greater Manchester should be using to calculate the housing need. Currently, there is no clear guidance on whether targets should be based on forecasts made by the Office for National Statistics, or on Government forecasts. Once that has been clarified, there needs to be an explanation on whether local housing need target is a minimum number, a target that the city region must hit, or if that is a buffer within which we can fall. These two issues are vital to my constituents, who face losing four precious areas of green belt.

Like the hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly), I pay tribute to local campaigners and people who persistently describe and value this wonderful piece of land. The impact of extra traffic and air pollution, which I hope I have outlined, together with the loss of recreation space brought about by any new development will be damaging to the people of Salford. This green-belt land is cherished by our local communities. There would be grave consequences if these four green-belt sites on my constituency were released for development.

Local Government and Social Care Funding

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Before I call the Scottish National party Front-Bench spokesperson, I advise colleagues that about 25 Members want to speak. If everybody sticks to around 10 minutes, we will not need to impose a time limit.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I did not get the chance to correct the Secretary of State, so it is important that I do so now. My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) quite rightly mentioned the instability of the care market, but the Secretary of State provided an incorrect impression of the situation. Research by Care England shows that there are now 564 fewer care homes when compared with 2015 and that there has been a net loss of 8,119 care home beds nationwide. The Secretary of State gave an incorrect impression, and we should not carry on the debate after that sort of wrong impression has been given.

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[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer). She gave a very good and comprehensive speech, but I cannot say the same about the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, who gave an impassioned speech that was no doubt great for Facebook clicks but bore very little resemblance to the reality and substance of the debate today. We have a true cross-party challenge that we need to address, and he conveniently chose to ignore some of the critical points about council funding, as it is distributed across our country.

Many Opposition Members spoke about Birmingham, a city that I know well. It is a great city; I have lived and worked there for many years. They were decrying the Government for their seeming neglect of spending in Birmingham. The blame for the problems in Birmingham lie firmly at the Labour administration’s door. Shall we just look at the facts? In my constituency in Worcestershire, the core spending power per dwelling is £1,356, and in Birmingham, it is £2,022—nearly 50% more. Yes, this reflects the need, but we have need in my area of Redditch as well. What is that administration doing with the money? It is squandering the money on consultants and inefficient services, when it cannot even collect the rubbish on the streets. There is rubbish piling up. It is breaking its promises to the electorate. It cannot collect the bins. The strikes have cost it £12 million, which could have funded the council tax rise that it has just inflicted on its residents.

However, that is enough about Birmingham and enough about that. I want to focus on this very important issue, on which I think there is more consensus than there is political point scoring. There is no doubt that adult social care is an absolutely critical issue. As a Member of Parliament, I hear from people who have tragic stories and face very difficult choices. I am also the daughter of a dementia sufferer, who lives on her own in Cumbria. I have seen at first hand the difficulties and challenges of navigating the system to support a frail, vulnerable lady in a very isolated rural area. We all have constituents that suffer from dementia and other conditions, so we need to grapple with this issue.

It is right to say that the lack of a social care Green Paper is a missed opportunity. I am delighted to be the co-chair of the all-party group on carers, which is doing some excellent work. Carers, of course, are the unsung heroes. They provide £132 billion-worth of care across the UK. Over the next 10 years, 20 million people will start caring. We know that unpaid carers make a huge contribution in so many ways, so I gently call on the Minister to address that.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is rightly raising the plight of carers, which is a subject that is very close to my heart, as it seems to be to hers. Does she also regret the lack of a national carers strategy from her Government? The last national carers strategy was produced in 2009 and there is a campaign among carers to get the Government to produce one. We do not have a Green Paper and we do not have a national carers strategy.

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the hon. Lady for that point; we work together on the all-party group and we share those concerns. I was about to press the Minister for more updates on when we can see the Green Paper, because while this debate is about local authority funding, of course there is also the role of carers and joining up the role of carers in the national health service and in local authorities. Those services have to work together and that is a critical part of this debate.

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[Norman Lamb]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the issue of how we care for people of a younger age who have care needs, particularly those with learning disabilities and autism. What happens too often is that those people end up in institutions when they do not need to be there, often away from home and at enormous cost to the public purse. Again, the evidence from around the country shows that where this is done well and where families are supported to keep someone at home, helping them through crises, we not only reduce the cost to the public purse but have a massive impact on their wellbeing. He is also right to highlight the fact that we end up with awful disputes about who is responsible for payment as people are shunted around the country in a way that, in my view, fundamentally breaches their human rights.

[Barbara Keeley]

I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman is talking about this topic. It is absolutely vital, but does he regret the extent to which the Government now seem to have abandoned the transforming care programme? There seems to be no future for it. From the time when he was a Minister, there was a programme to deal with the issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) raised, but there now appears to be an abandonment of targets and an abandonment of the future of that programme, and certainly no funding to make it work.

[Norman Lamb]

I am deeply concerned about the future—or lack of a future—of the transforming care programme. One of the problems is that it is often NHS England that is funding care in an institution, and when a local authority is under financial stress, there is not much of an incentive to take that person out of the institution and make them the responsibility of the local authority. There has to be a way of funding the building of infrastructure to support people in the community. That is what has failed to happen so far.

This is not a static issue that we face. There is growing pressure. We are all living longer, often with chronic conditions that in the past used to kill us. That is a great triumph of man and womankind, but there is a cost attached, yet we have no mechanism to address the increasing funding needs of social care and, in particular, dementia.

The hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), one of the valued members of the Science and Technology Committee, made the point that the cost to society of dementia is about £26 billion every year, but that is going to rise dramatically. Whatever we say about spending money efficiently—I completely agree about the need to spend money efficiently and to innovate and do things in a more effective way—the dramatic rise in demand inevitably means that we will have to spend more as a society on supporting people with dementia and on research to find cures for dementia.

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[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

Today, we have heard from many hon. Members about the disastrous impact of the Government’s relentless and short-sighted cuts to council budgets from Hull to Westminster North, from York to Nottinghamshire, from West Ham to Lewisham, from Birmingham to St Helens, from Sheffield to Exeter, Burnley, Hartlepool, Tyneside, Chesterfield and many others. Nowhere, as we have heard in the debate, has that disastrous impact been felt more acutely than in social care. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith), whom we heard from in the past hour, on presenting such powerful stories about family carers and the role of care staff, the absolutely vital two parts of the backbone of social care.

Social care is one of the most important pillars of support for vulnerable people up and down the country. I pay tribute to all our dedicated and hard-working care staff, many of whom are in the dilemma my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) just talked about. It is sad that the cuts mean we are in a situation where care staff have to go on strike for their pay, because many of them go above and beyond in the most difficult of circumstances to make sure that older people and disabled people get the help they need. We think a lot about NHS staff, but let us face it: without our 1.4 million care staff the care system would simply collapse. My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) raised the crucial fact that there are 110,000 vacant posts in the care workforce. That vacancy rate is deeply concerning, because it makes the situation for the staff who are doing the job much, much worse.

The Government should be shouting from the rafters about the value of social care, but most of the time there has instead been a wall of silence. It is only by securing this Opposition day debate today that we have been able to raise this issue. There is very little coverage of the issue elsewhere. My hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) talked about the vacuum around Government policy on social care, and she was right to do that. Ministers seem not to want talk about a vision for social care. That is not surprising, I guess, following the Government’s litany of broken promises about reform. Let me just touch on some of them.

The Government dropped the cap on care costs, due to come into effect in 2016—we had legislated for a cap on care costs—leaving thousands of people unexpectedly having to pay for their own care. Then, at the general election in 2017 we had the so-called dementia tax, a disastrous proposal which lasted only four days before being abandoned. I have met family carers who are still desperately worried about that policy, because they think it is still around. Now, more than two years after promising a social care Green Paper, with the hope of better support for families across the country, the Government are still no nearer fixing the crisis that they have made. Let there be no doubt about it: this crisis has been made so much worse since 2010. We were told there would be a Green Paper in summer 2017 and then by the end of 2017, but it never arrived. It was then delayed till summer 2018 and then autumn 2018. Winter came and still no Green Paper. The Secretary of State told us at the start of the year that it would arrive by 1 April. It has not arrived and there is still no sign of the Green Paper. Perhaps the Minister will tell us when we are going to see it.

Now, when councils need an extra £1.5 billion to close the funding gap, the Government have offered derisory short-term funding. Last winter, the Government offered a measly £240 million for adult social for winter pressures. That would pay for only three months of home care for the older people the Secretary of State said it would help, but that is not enough. That was hardly enough for the harsh conditions of last winter, which, if you remember Mr Speaker, lasted very much more than three months. This year, councils will receive a further £410 million to be shared between older adults, working-age adults, and children’s social care services. The Secretary of State is leaving councils and councillors to make the invidious choice between caring for the most at-risk children, vulnerable adults with disabilities, and our most frail and isolated older people. Throwing small, one-off pots of money at this problem every year will not deal with the crisis in the long term. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston said, it is a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

[James Cartlidge]

Will the hon. Lady set out her preference for how we should pay for long-term care?

[Barbara Keeley]

We get this every time we have a debate on social care—although we do not have many such debates—from Government Members who have no ideas whatsoever. I have just run through all the abandoned ideas and the abandoned promises that the Government have made on the Green Paper. I am really surprised that any Government Member actually has the cheek to stand up and ask Opposition Front Benchers what we would do. We laid out what we would do in 2010. We had a White Paper, not a Green Paper. We laid out all our proposals in our manifesto. We are the side with ideas and proposals on taking forward social care. This Government have no ideas and no vision, and I am amazed that an hon. Member really has the cheek to do that.

[James Cartlidge]

It is very kind of the hon. Lady to give way. I spoke in the debate and said that we have some very difficult decisions to face. We need to be open with the public, and I said that we need to look at, for example, equity in residential property. I think that is unavoidable. Does she think we should do that?

[Barbara Keeley]

We have laid out our proposals and we said how we would fund them. As I say, most of what we are debating today relates to the short-term crisis. Once we got past the short-term crisis, I think the hon. Gentleman would have difficulty. There has been talk about involving the public in this. At the moment, the public are faced with the type of care that my hon. Friends have discussed and debated and with the care staff and workforce in the situation that they are in. At no point, in the middle of a crisis, would we be saying to the public, “Use the value of your property. Let’s go for this type of funding or that type of funding.” That is cloud cuckoo land. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle talking about that absolutely crucial example. What would he say to those people who need care? That is the question for him to answer.

Councils need sustained investment that undoes the damage of years of austerity and cuts, but the Government’s choice—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is sitting there smirking at me at the moment. The Government have made a choice to pursue ideological cuts to council budgets that have seen £7 billion lost from adult social care spending since 2010. Let us think about what that has meant: 400,000 fewer people getting publicly funded social care between 2010 and 2015; 100,000 fewer people getting taxpayer-funded social care in the last four years alone; and 90 people a day dying before they receive the public social care for which they have applied.

It is not simply the most disadvantaged who are losing out either. Many of those who are having to foot the bill for their care are being exploited by a broken care system where private care providers can act with impunity and where vindictive care homes can evict older people whose families dare to complain about their standard of care. That is a very serious matter, as we discussed in the debate, given the level of closures of care homes and the loss of care home beds we have had, as touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins). The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) also talked about being in a part of the country where it is impossible to get care. That is the position we are in. If care home owners can evict older people, that is a drastic situation. Opportunistic home care agencies are overcharging vulnerable people for care visits that are too short and endangering their health by forcing staff to work when they are sick. We heard about the care staff who are too scared to take time off sick.

I want to make clear to hon. Members the human impact of not getting the right amount of support, although those who have bothered to attend this debate—I am thinking particularly of Government Members—might have heard some examples. Simply put, it means people going without the support that they need to live with basic dignity. Not having needs met means going unwashed and undressed. It can mean waiting for hours to go to the toilet because no help is available. It can mean a person going thirsty because there is no one to pour them a glass of water and going hungry because there is no one to prepare them a proper meal. This is the experience of many thousands of older people who are going without care or who have insufficient care. I am glad that many hon. Members have talked about a care visit being the only contact that many older or vulnerable people have in the day.

The consequences of inadequate support in the community for working-age people are also horrifying. In recent months, we have seen many reports of vulnerable autistic people and people with learning disabilities left to languish for years in private in-patient units—vulnerable, detained, secluded and neglected in long-stay units. These units, many of them private, are funded by the NHS at great cost to the taxpayer because councils simply have not been given the money to move people from these units to be supported closer to home. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) and the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) both raised that issue. I have stood at this Dispatch Box before and called this a national scandal, and I make no apology for doing so again.

Back to Government promises: after Winterbourne View in 2011, the Government promised to close inappropriate units for good within three years—by 2014. It did not happen. Indeed, eight years later, there are still 2,260 people detained in hospital settings when they need not be there. The number of adults trapped in these units has fallen by only a fraction. Worse still, the number of children in these units has actually increased.

Where this Conservative Government have done nothing, Labour will act: rather than years’ more cuts, we will invest £8 billion in social care; rather than 90 people a day dying waiting for care, we will provide more people with the support they need; rather than care staff being pushed to the brink, we will pay them a real living wage; and rather than more delay, we will build a national care service that supports older and disabled people when they need it. This is our message to people across the country, young and old, desperate for care and support: a Labour Government will give you the support you need and deserve. That is why I urge Members to support our motion tonight.

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[Caroline Dinenage]

As the hon. Lady will know, a version of the Green Paper already exists, but that does not mean that we are resting on our laurels while we are waiting for an opportunity to publish it. We are continuing to improve it and evolve it so that when we do publish it—as soon as possible—it will be in the best possible shape.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford also spoke about dementia, and about the importance of investing in dementia care and research. We lead the world in this regard, but we know that there is more to be done if we are to achieve our aspiration of being the best place in the world in which to live with dementia by 2020.

The hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) spoke about some of the difficulties for councils that had been addressed by “working smarter”. She also said that she thought it unfortunate that councils had had to raise council tax in order to have the money that they need. I point out to her gently that the average annual increase in council tax bills from 1997 to 2010 was 5.8% and since 2010 it has been only 2.2%—half what it was under the previous Labour Government.

The hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) spoke about youth violence and the importance of schools, social services, voluntary sector organisations and public health bodies working together through a community-led approach to deal with it. She was absolutely right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) spoke about the challenges facing rural communities and the higher costs of delivering things such as domiciliary care. She also spoke about the importance of innovation, quality of care and being outcome-focused. She spoke glowingly about the National Centre for Rural Health and Care.

I always listen very carefully to what the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) has to say because he has done this job. He spoke about the importance of investing in prevention and said that social care must help people stay independent for longer. He admitted that this job is not quite as easy as it looks and that when he was fulfilling it, there were difficult funding decisions that had to be made. It will be no surprise to him that that continues to be the case and that nothing has changed since he left the role. It is important that he recognises that the challenges continue.

The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) said that innovative choices have had to be made, that there are better services that cost less in his constituency and that the local authority has had to invest in order to save money. He did make a couple of errors, unfortunately. He mentioned that Labour councils are producing lower council tax, but everybody knows that it is actually Conservative councils that deliver better value for money, with a combination of delivering great quality services while keeping council tax lower than either Labour or the Liberal Democrats.

The hon. Members for Burnley (Julie Cooper), for Bradford West (Naz Shah), for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid), for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and for Peterborough (Fiona Onasanya) all made passionate speeches, mainly about the impact of austerity on areas of deprivation.

The hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) spoke about an innovative employment hub that has grown from the loss of the steelworks in her constituency. She spoke about the Care Academy in Cleveland, which is doing great work equipping more people for roles in adult social care. She mentioned how the challenges of caring for an ageing population are being addressed at a local level. I say to her that that is something that will have to be addressed not just at a Government level, but at a local level and a voluntary level. We all have to work together to face these challenges, which are being faced the world over.

The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) spoke about how important it is to have cross-party and collaborative work on this issue. We all face difficult choices. For too long, adult social care has been used as a political football. Even today, the Opposition spokeswoman talked about the dementia tax once again. That is very unhelpful language that does not help us come to a meaningful consensus or to work together.

[Barbara Keeley]

Will the Minister give way?

[Caroline Dinenage]

I will in a moment.

The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith) asked about the important issue of sleep-in shifts. The Court of Appeal judgment last summer ruled that employers are not required to pay the national minimum wage. That has now gone to the Supreme Court, the ruling of which should give clarity to both providers and employees. The Government have taken account of the costs deriving from the national minimum wage and gave an additional £2 billion of funding to local authorities in the spring Budget of 2017. We encourage employers to pay more than the minimum wage where possible, and I recently wrote to local authorities to state my view that the judgment should not be used as an opportunity to make ad hoc changes.

[Barbara Keeley]

rose—

[Caroline Dinenage]

I am just going to make a bit of progress.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) highlighted the difficult choices we have had to make. By painting an even bleaker picture of how things have panned out north of the border, he showed just how difficult those choices have been.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) spoke movingly about her constituents, Paul and Lily. She was right to highlight the very personal cases and individual stories that every single one of us comes across in our constituency casework. If she wants to send me more details, I am happy to raise the issue with my colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions.

The population is ageing. The number of people aged 75 and over is set to double over the next 30 years, and the number of people of working age with care needs is also growing. Some of today’s speakers have painted a picture of a social care system that is broken as a result of a lack of funding, but the truth is that while money is undoubtedly tight, if we are to face the challenges of an ageing population, we need to do more than just put more money in. We need a large-scale reform of the system if we are going to face the future with confidence that we can care for and support those who most need it. In the short term, we have put in around £10 billion of additional funding, but we will be bringing forward an adult social care Green Paper that will look at the long-term funding of adult social care.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes that despite the Prime Minister announcing that austerity is over, local authorities’ spending power per household is on course to fall by an average of 23 per cent by 2020, and that nine of the 10 most deprived council areas in this country have seen reductions that are almost three times the average of any other council under this Government; recognises that this has resulted in social care budgets in England losing £7 billion; further notes that at the last General Election Labour committed to a fully costed plan to invest an additional £8 billion in social care over this Parliament; and calls on the Government to ensure that local authorities and social care are properly and sustainably funded.