Adult Social Care: Long-term Funding

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

Yes, I completely agree with that. We have got to get on with it. If we agreed everything now, it would probably take two or three years to put it in place. That is why we suggested the stop-gap measure of the extra business rates in 2020 being made available for local authorities. We thought that was a very important solution. If we get it right, we can have stability for the long term. The Germans did this over 20 years ago. They have a stable system and it works. They have just put extra money into it with general public support, because everyone trusts the system. That is the position we have to get to.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) for the way he chaired the Committee; it was very collegiate and consensual, which really helped us in our deliberations. He may remember that when we visited a care home the residents and families of those receiving care accused this Parliament of a lack of courage for not having addressed this difficult issue for so long. Does he agree that there is a real sense of urgency? When the Government produce a Green Paper in the autumn, we need to get on with it. There is no reason why we cannot move this forward quite quickly. As he said, Germany has done it since 1994. Frankly, it shames this country that Germany has had a good system in place for so long, while we have not.

[Mr Betts]

I completely agree. If we are still talking about this in two or three years’ time we will have failed. We have to get some decisions and get on with it. As politicians, we are often very good at coming up with ways to spend money. In this report we have actually come up with ways to raise money, which is the difficult part. We have done the heavy lifting for both the Government and the Opposition Front Benches. We now say, “We’ve handed the pass over to you. Get on and run with it and make it work.”