Adult Social Care

Debate between Alan Meale and Robert Buckland

Thursday 8th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Meale (Mansfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on their tenacity in securing this debate. Hon. Members from all parts of this House should give them credit for their hard work and effort.

In this important debate, I wish briefly to raise the issue of people suffering from autism and Asperger’s syndrome. As hon. Members will be fully aware, those conditions are extremely serious. Both are lifelong disabilities and they affect sufferers in a number of different ways. I fully accept that some people who have either of those conditions are able to live semi-independent lives, with only partial support, but others—indeed most—need a range of specialist support throughout their lives. Although they do not represent everybody who needs adult social care, I am not talking about a small number of people. Approximately 1% of people in the UK have autism, and they and their families account for at least 2 million involved citizens in the UK, which represents, on average, approximately 3,000 people in every constituency in Britain.

Yet, even given those numbers, the National Autistic Society says that sufferers routinely struggle to access the services they need and that when they do access them the outcomes are largely poor. NAS research also shows: two thirds of all adults with autism say that they do not have enough support to meet their needs; more than 60% of these adults rely absolutely on their families for financial support, with approximately 40% of them having to live at home with their parents; and only 15% of people with autism are able to find full-time work.

Failures to provide such support are also very expensive to the ordinary taxpayer. According to the National Audit Office, if local services supported only 4% of adults with high-functioning autism, that would be cost-neutral, and if they supported only 8%, that would save the Government at least £67 million a year. As a number of hon. Members have said, the Dilnot commission on funding of care and support stated a number of good things, in particular that the present system was both unfair and underfunded. It called on the Government to increase spending on social care and to limit the cost and charges for those who need it.

The report’s key recommendations included the need for national eligibility criteria, with all those who enter adulthood with health and social need being eligible for free state support immediately rather than being expected to pay themselves. This is where I have a slight difference with the Minister, who said that it is not only about money. For many people who come to my surgery at their wits’ end, it is about money. Indeed, even those who had money do not have very much left in their late adulthood to spend either on themselves or on their loved ones, so money is very important.

In conclusion, I believe that the adoption of the Dilnot recommendations would lead to an entirely fresh approach that would deliver greater awareness of autism, and in particular of the sufferers’ needs, care and, of course, support. It would also put in place measures to relieve the short-term crisis in funding in social care.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right to raise important statistics about people with autism, but may I urge him, when he speaks passionately about it, not to refer to people as suffering from the condition but rather to acknowledge that they have the condition and have great potential and that what we should all be doing through the care system is ensuring that they realise that potential? Does he accept that?

[Sir Alan Meale]

I fully understand the direction that the hon. Gentleman is coming from, but let me just say that I am the son of a permanently and seriously disabled person and he was that way all of my life. I also served as a board member of the Portland training college for the disabled in Nottinghamshire and have been deeply engaged in matters connected with the seriously disabled for years. Believe me, when I use the terms “suffering” and “sufferers”, I mean them not in a derogatory sense but to highlight the plight of the people who I am talking about.

In conclusion, I believe that adopting Dilnot would put in place measures to relieve the short-term crisis in social care funding and, most importantly, establish sustainability for care and support in the longer term.