Care: Budget

Baroness Greengross Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jolly]

A lot of work has gone on in preparing local authorities to give assessments to carers for their needs and support, in exactly the same way as they assess the people they care for. The cost currently being factored in for that is £104.6 million—£31.3 million on assessments and £73.3 million on the provision of support.

[Baroness Greengross (CB)]

My Lords, a couple of days ago, Age UK published its scorecard, which shows that, despite rising numbers of older people and rising demand for services, the amount spent has fallen dramatically over the past few years. In fact, it has gone down by over 40%. There are some shocking figures, for example that half of the people who struggle to get into a bath or to wash do not get any help, and that one in three of those who cannot go to the toilet without help are not getting any help, and preventive services are going down. In the light of that, does the noble Baroness not think that, nationally, it is time for the Government to come in with some direction?

[Baroness Jolly]

The Government have been trying very hard to give direction. One issue that we have been trying to direct is integrated care, joining up care services. However, public finances are in a precarious position. The deficit is still projected to be over £100 billion. The report from Age UK is a very good and interesting read, but I discussed it with officials this morning and we could not follow some of the figures and ways of working from its results.