Social Care Funding

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I hope that I can put the noble Lord’s mind at rest. In doing so, I thank him once again for the work he did on the Dilnot commission. It is our intention that the eligibility criteria will be introduced from April 2015—so, in advance of the Dilnot arrangements. As he well knows, that national minimum eligibility will be set to make access to care more consistent around the country. In addition, carers will have a legal right to an assessment to care for the first time. I take his point about trying to achieve cross-party consensus on social care funding.

As for funding in the existing system, in the last spending review we made, as he knows, an additional £7.2 billion over four years available for care and support. Since then, we have provided local authorities with an additional half a billion pounds. We believe the challenge creates an opportunity for local authorities to innovate and to explore new ways of working better to meet the needs of their local populations and to optimise the use of the resources that they have. Many local authorities are already innovating, and we are committed to supporting them to deliver further service improvements.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I am pleased to welcome the Government’s Statement today. This has been a long time in the waiting, not simply from this coalition Government, who have done well to get this far, but from previous Governments. There has been prevarication for more than 10 years, and it is about time we got started. We have now started. As has been said, this is a first step on the way. There are many steps to be taken thereafter, and a great deal of discussion and, if possible, cross-party consensus would be useful.

Will the Minister confirm that an adequate length of time will be made available for that, not simply a Question for Short Debate, in the near future? Secondly, will he confirm that it would be open to any Government, perhaps his own Government, to look again at the financial thresholds that they are setting in this Statement as and when, as we all hope, the economy improves?

[Earl Howe]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and pay tribute to his work over many years in this field and in the royal commission some years ago. I will convey his wishes to my noble friend and other members of the usual channels. I agree that it would be unsatisfactory to have an unduly short debate on a complex and important subject.

As regards the thresholds, I hope I can reassure him. It is our intention, as I mentioned, to introduce clauses into the care and support Bill when it reaches Parliament that would embody the essence of the Dilnot proposals but to leave it to regulations to set the relevant numbers for the cap and the means test, for example, so that it would be a relatively easy matter for a future Government, if they so wished in brighter economic circumstances, to change those figures if they felt that that was the right thing to do.