Budget Resolutions

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for the hon. Member’s question. I think he may have missed, while trying to catch your eye, Mr Speaker, what I just said about the £1.7 billion to improve the wider social care system that was announced in September. The additional £3.6 billion to local government that was announced in the Budget is more money. This is not an arms race on how much we can spend; this Government are interested in delivering outcomes. Covid has, no doubt, added extra challenges to our reforming agenda, but it has not deflected us from delivering our promises; it has made our commitment more focused as we deliver and build back better. For me, that means skills, schools and families.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I detect a hint of complacency on funding for social care. The Secretary of State mentioned £500 million to go towards workforce issues. That is nothing; it is a drop in the ocean for the issues with the social care workforce. There are more than 100,000 vacancies in social care and turnover is 30%. The money just will not touch the sides. The reaction to the Budget from the social care sector, which I hope to speak about today, has been one of profound disappointment and disbelief, really, that the Government do not understand what a crisis the sector is in. I really think it is about time for the Secretary of State to change his tone on that.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I have to respectfully disagree with the hon. Lady. In my time as vaccines Minister, I saw the social care sector rise to the challenge and deliver. I opened my remarks by reminding the House of that and thanking the workers on the frontline. Of course, money does make a difference, including the £500 million announced to make sure that we retain and inspire the social care workforce.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

You would not know from the Budget that our health and care system is in crisis, made worse by the fact that we are still in the middle of a pandemic that claimed 1,097 lives last week. One of the key factors in coping with the crisis caused by the covid pandemic has been the commitment of our health and care staff and the dedication of unpaid carers to support their family members, yet the Budget contained no costings for training and education budgets for the NHS workforce, no extra resources to improve support for unpaid carers, and no extra investment to meet the immediate needs for funding to relieve the crisis in social care.

The response to the Budget from the social care sector has been damning. Care England, which represents care providers, said there

“will be serious and far-reaching consequences”

from the lack of measures in the Budget to support adult social care. The Care and Support Alliance said:

“If the Prime Minister’s ambition to ‘fix social care’ is ever to be realised Rishi Sunak has to play his part by providing enough funding to make it happen. He hasn’t done so and therefore, unfortunately, the future of social care remains as uncertain as ever”.

There are now more than 100,000 care jobs vacant and continuing pressures on care providers, who are struggling to recruit enough staff to keep care facilities open.

The Care Quality Commission recently warned of a “tsunami of unmet need” in social care, which will in turn heap more pressure on the 13 million unpaid carers who give up so much time and energy to care for their family members, with little recognition or support. There is cross-party consensus that we need far more than the funds announced in the Budget to deal with this crisis in social care. The Health and Social Care Committee recently repeated our call for at least £7 billion a year of extra funding for social care to cover demographic changes, to uplift staff pay in line with the national minimum wage and to protect people who face catastrophic social care costs. What the Government have announced is that additional money from the health and care levy will only fund the cap on catastrophic care costs and some of the consequential costs of that, and the cap only starts to apply from October 2023. Although the Chancellor announced £4.8 billion of extra grant funding for local councils over the next three years, that is not ringfenced for social care, leaving councils to decide how to allocate it across all their cash-strapped services.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said the Budget and spending review were “deeply disappointing”. It looked at the £1.6 billion a year extra and said

“it will do little more than meet the costs of the rise in the national living wage for care workers from next April.”

The Local Government Association told the Select Committee recently that the funding gap for adult social care was £6.1 billion and that this underfunding puts the workforce and unpaid family carers under further strain, creating unmet and under-met need.

For years, all we have had are sticking plasters from the Government in response to this ever-worsening crisis in social care, rather than recognition of how serious the underfunding issues are. The Budget missed an opportunity to do something about the crisis. The impact of that failure will be serious and far-reaching in social care. We have just heard my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) raising that issue, and there will be more of us standing up here, week in, week out, describing the situation she has described in her local council areas. It will be all of us.

We need immediate investment to ensure that care staff are paid a proper wage that will compete with better rates paid in retail and hospitality. What are we doing when people can be paid more for flipping burgers than for looking after an elderly person, perhaps with dementia? We need investment so that unpaid carers get the breaks and support they need after 18 months that have very much broken them, and we need investment to address that tsunami of unmet need. It is shameful that we have not paid, as other countries have, a bonus for health and care staff. Indeed, the Minister for Care and Mental Health recently said, when asked about vacancy issues, that they can work millions more hours, just as they did during the pandemic.

I have outlined the failure of the Government to put the needed investment into social care, but the final point I want to make is about the failure of the Chancellor to reverse his £1,000 cut to universal credit, which will do so much damage this winter. Three quarters of families on universal credit lose more from the £20 cut than they gain from the Budget changes. The Resolution Foundation points out that the poorest fifth of households will still be an average of £280 a year worse off overall. One constituent told me that they, like many others, had been hopeful that the cut would be reversed in the Budget. They are now fearful that throughout this winter they will have to keep choosing between heating their home and eating. They have lost £80 a month due to the cut, but their energy prices have already risen by £95 a month. It was a callous and cruel cut to make in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and a shameful aspect of the Budget.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

I thank the hon. Lady; hers was one of the more thoughtful speeches in this debate. We have committed £162.5 million as part of our winter plan to help fund the adult social care workforce. That money is exactly designed to make sure that we can attract people into this most pivotal of sectors. That comes on top of the £5.4 billion across the spending review that we have committed, thanks to the new health and social care levy, and the record funding for local government that was announced in the SR. I am always happy to work with her on this, but there is more money for this sector.

[Barbara Keeley]

Unless there are pay increases for care staff, the small dribbles in amounts of training, and bits of this and bits of that, will not deal with this serious crisis. There are 105,000 vacancies, and people are leaving in droves to go and work in burger bars and other forms of retail.

[Mr Clarke]

Again, I thank the hon. Lady for raising that point. I do take this point seriously. We have committed in this Budget to the national living wage increase, which is a major increase—6.6%, rising to £9.50 an hour. That money comes as a complement to the extra funding that the Government have committed to help with labour shortages, and I believe it will make a real difference. Obviously we can continue to monitor the situation closely with the sector.

If I may make a little progress, I want to return to the core theme of today’s debate: our public services. As the Chancellor outlined last week, this Budget increases total departmental spending over this Parliament by £150 billion. That is the largest rise this century, with spending growing by 3.8% a year in real terms. We are taking forward plans to deliver more than £600 billion of gross public sector investment over this Parliament, meaning that public sector net investment will be at its highest sustained level as a share of GDP for nearly half a century. This is funding that can and will make real change possible for communities throughout the country.

Last week, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) reminded the House when talking about the NHS that increased spending is not enough on its own and that we must strive to deliver value for taxpayers. I could not agree more. The measure of a Government’s compassion is not how much they spend, but the outcomes they deliver. In making these investments, the Government are committed to ensuring that every pound is spent well and makes a difference.

To take healthcare, we are building 40 new hospitals and upgrading 70 more, as well as funding 50,000 nurses and 50 million more primary healthcare appointments. We are working closely with the NHS to roll out a stream of innovative developments that will reduce backlogs, help cut waiting times and transform healthcare for good. Some 100 community diagnostic centres, rightly praised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), will help people to obtain tests close to home. New surgical hubs will cut waits for elective operations, and we are making a record investment in R&D to support the health technologies of the future.