Social Care: Funding

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president and former chairman of the Local Government Association. I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for initiating this important debate.

Adult social care is a vital council service that helps to transform people’s quality of life. It supports adults of all ages with a range of different needs and it supports their carers. Despite the fact that it is so vital to the fabric of our society, there is a crisis in social care. We are grappling with the challenges of rising demand, people living longer and needing extra support in older age, care providers closing and contracts being handed back to councils. In my view, we need to invest new money into social care and we need to do it urgently. Despite this point being recognised across the Floor of this House, successive Governments have to date struggled to get political consensus on the long-term solutions to our national care crisis.

In my time as chairman of the Local Government Association, I was involved with many initiatives and we put forward solutions that in the end did not lead to positive change. From my many years’ experience in politics, I have to say that unfortunately sometimes our electoral cycle hampers our ability to deliver long-term solutions. But it does not need to be like that. Pension reform is a recent example of consensus and, of course, the post-war experience showed what was possible as our modern welfare state emerged.

This is not just about past precedent. Only last week, a cross-party group of Members from the Health and Social Care Committee and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee published their report on this issue. They called for new funding for adult social care and made it clear that bold decisions are needed if we are to solve the crisis facing the sector.

Last week’s commendable report is not the only one that has contributed to establishing cross-party support for a new way forward. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, led an excellent inquiry last year and his committee’s report, The Long-term Sustainability of the NHS and Adult Social Care, made a significant contribution to moving this conversation forward.

We also know that Members of this House and the other place recognise the need for additional funding for social care. A recent ComRes poll commissioned by the Local Government Association found that the vast majority of parliamentarians agree that additional funding should go to councils’ social care budgets to tackle the funding crisis. There is agreement among many national and local politicians that we need new money for social care. We need to work with the Government to deliver this.

As I said, there is now a clear political consensus that new money must go into social care via councils to help them to protect care services. Many council services, including housing, leisure and libraries, also help to save the NHS money. Without essential council services, we will almost certainly see further rises in demand and the accident and emergency crisis spiral to an unresolvable, year-round problem. Investing in social care will help to prevent crises in the NHS by reducing the number of people who are admitted to hospital in the first place.

Local government is absolutely essential to resolving the problem and helping people to live independent lives. Councils are the most efficient, transparent and trusted part of the public sector. They are effectively managing ever tighter budgets to maintain their track record of delivering quality services. The latest figures show that councils have reduced delayed transfers of care from hospital due to social care by 33% since July 2017. This has been at a faster rate than the NHS. This should surely help to persuade the Government to fully fund our social care system.

To conclude, I am sure that all sides of the House will welcome the new money for the NHS; the 70th birthday bonus funding is great news and much needed. We now need a similar funding boost for social care and prevention services. We need more money spent on preventing ill health. This is good for our communities and an efficient use of taxpayers’ money. I look forward to the publication of the Government’s Green Paper on social care in the autumn and with it, I hope, new money for social care services and new innovations to create a system fit for the people of the 21st century.