Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I absolutely join my hon. Friend in congratulating Herefordshire Housing. One of the key things about people with dementia is that relatively small adjustments to their homes can make it possible for them to live at home healthily and happily for much longer under the care of a husband, wife or partner without having to go into residential care. Those are precious years that we should treasure and do everything we can to facilitate, so I am delighted that that is happening, and he will be pleased to know that, thanks to the Government’s initiative, it is happening all over the country.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Figures from the House of Commons Library show that £1.8 billion has been cut from social care budgets since 2010. Does not that imply that delayed discharge among older people will be driven upwards because the finances are just not there to look after them?

[Mr Hunt]

I think the figures the hon. Gentleman is talking about are efficiencies and not actual cuts. [Laughter.] Well, Members should look at the figures carefully. If they are the figures from the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, that is what they will find. If the hon. Gentleman looks more specifically at the figures related to delayed discharges, he will find that, year on year, the number attributable to the social care system went down by 50,000 bed days in the last year.