Social Care

Debate between Baroness Keeley and Clive Betts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley]

My hon. Friend has made a key point. I have already mentioned the fragility of the care market. We shall not be able to explore that fully during my speech, but it is a serious factor. If we do not get the funding right, more and more care providers will simply walk away. At the Unison meeting, members of a Leicestershire rehabilitation team spoke of the problems that they experience when care providers walk away from a contract. When the staff are not there any more, they have to plug the gaps.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

The Communities and Local Government Committee is conducting an inquiry into the funding of social care. We have learned that not only are care providers handing contracts back, but councils are terminating contracts because of the inadequacy of the care that is provided. Ultimately, that means that individuals do not receive the care that they should be receiving. Their appointments are cancelled, or there are flying visits from under-trained care workers who are paid less than the minimum wage.

[Barbara Keeley]

My hon. Friend is right, and I shall come to that point shortly.

Carers UK reports that insufficient support from health and social care services is leaving the carers who are doing all that extra work

“isolated, burnt-out and unable to look after their own health.”

The Richmond Group of Charities published the story of Susan. She cares for her husband Bruce, who has been diagnosed with both Parkinson’s and dementia. The struggle that Susan underwent to find quality care is one about which I have been hearing from carers for some time. She was provided with respite care from a care home which was of such low quality that her husband was unrecognisable when she returned for him:

“He hadn’t been shaved, he couldn’t walk, and his eyes were crusted…with blepharitis.”

When Susan managed to get home care for her husband, it was also poor quality. She said:

“They didn’t know what they were doing. It seemed like they’d never cared before. They turned up at five o’clock in the afternoon to put my husband to bed. Or they turned up at ten, once I’d already helped him to bed. Absolutely awful.”

It is also telling how carers like Susan feel when dealing with the challenges of negotiating complex and fragmented care systems. She “felt small” and she said:

“You go in there, and you’ve got no idea about anything, about care. It’s like going in on the first day at school.”

Susan is not a rare case of a carer battling to get respite care or home care of an acceptable quality. Carers UK tell us that three out of 10 carers in its survey have experienced a change in the amount of care and support services that they receive. Six out of 10 of those carers experiencing a change said the amount of care and support received had been reduced.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Baroness Keeley and Clive Betts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I want to get beyond the Budget headlines, which often lead to cheers from the Government Benches, and instead consider some of the details and try to get some answers.

I want to return to the point I raised in Communities and Local Government questions earlier, in an intervention on the Secretary of State and then in a point of order, because I still have not had an answer. The Government have said that local authorities will be compensated for the change to small business rates relief, which amounts to £1.7 billion in the next financial year—2017-18—and to similar amounts in years after. He said it was mentioned on page 84, line 15, of the Red Book, but that refers to the cost to the Government of the small business rates relief changes; it does not show how local authorities will be compensated for that loss by a section 31 grant. Will someone please show me where in the Red Book the section 31 grant is described as compensating local authorities?

[Barbara Keeley]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a very pressing issue? In Greater Manchester, the business rates retention scheme could be put in place as early as 2017. Will the Government even have finished the consultation by then? Where are we? We need to know where we are.

[Mr Betts]

Local authorities are entitled to absolute certainty. We can welcome the help for small businesses but not at the cost of local authorities and their services. If the Minister cannot explain this today, I hope that the Secretary of State, to whom I have written, can at least give us a written answer that can be made available to everyone else through the Library.

The Secretary of State went on to say that after 2020, because no grant will be available, compensation will be provided by a reduction in devolved powers to local councils, so that they will not have as many things to spend their money on—money they now will not get through business rates relief. It is a bit disappointing that the Government’s way out is to reduce devolution. That does not seem to be consistent with their claim to be devolving more powers all the time.

More worryingly, on the change between the retail prices index and the consumer prices index, which comes into force in 2020, how on earth will the Government find a mechanism by which to compensate authorities for that change, given that it will vary year on year? How will they do it, when the only way to provide compensation will be by changing the devolved powers available to local authorities, which cannot be done on a yearly basis? Will the Minister please provide the mechanism and explain it to us?

There will be a fundamental problem here after 2020. If any future Government were to introduce the sorts of changes this Government have made to business rates, where would it leave local authorities? Their income would simply be cut, and there would be no means by which to compensate them because there would be no revenue support grant in existence. Local authorities’ devolved powers cannot be changed on a year-to-year basis. This does not just throw up the need in future to devolve receipt of business rates to local authorities; we also need seriously to consider devolving the right to set business rates and business rates assistance. If that is not done, this will be sham devolution, and it will raise the great risk of future Governments on a whim being able to change the system on which local authorities will rely for a good percentage of their income. This problem has to be thought through.

I turn now to the four-year settlement that the Secretary of State rightly offered to local councils for the rest of the Parliament. Where is that left by the £3.5 billion of efficiency savings the Chancellor announced in his Budget and the £4.4 billion of extra savings that presumably have to be found now that the PIP cuts are not being carried through? In total, it would seem to amount to an extra £7.9 billion that he will have to find. Can we have a categorical assurance from Ministers that this will not affect the four-year settlement offered to local councils? I hope that it will not once again be a case of giving local authorities certainty for the Parliament, only to come back within a few months and ask for more cuts, which would put them in an impossible position.

Moreover, are we going to see further cuts to the public health grant, which the Government have not preserved? In the last Parliament, the public health grant was initially—up to 2013—part of the health budget and ring-fenced accordingly, but it is now part of the local government budget, and already this financial year it has seen a one-off cut of £200 million. It is estimated that there will be £600 million more in real-terms cuts by 2020. Will the grant face any further cuts as a result of the Chancellor’s need to fill the £7.9 billion black hole?

Finally, the Government have announced £115 million of help to tackle rough sleeping. It is a blot on our society and it is right that extra help is being given to deal with it, but to tackle homelessness properly—apart from the prevention at one end—we need more social housing to offer to homeless people. What do the Government have to say about the Chartered Institute of Housing’s report stating that there will be 300,000 fewer social rented homes by the end of the Parliament than there were at the beginning? What about the evidence that St Mungo’s gave to the inquiry by the Communities and Local Government Committee the other day stating that, unless the Government changed the link to the local housing allowance, all its help and provision for homeless people will have been closed by the end of the Parliament? That is a situation that no one can tolerate.

Local Government Finance (England)

Debate between Baroness Keeley and Clive Betts

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley]

rose—

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I want to try to be fair and even-handed in these matters, and I shall focus on the positive elements first. We ought to welcome the four-year settlement on offer, as it is something that local government has for some time been asking for. It is a helpful step forward, providing greater certainty for the future. We are not quite sure yet what efficiency plans local councils will need to draw up to achieve it, but it seems a good starting point.

I welcome the money for social care, too. It is reasonable, but I have some questions about how it is going to work. I have had an exchange of correspondence with the Secretary of State and with the Local Government Association. The LGA clearly says that it asked for more money than it has got on transformational spending and it states that this was not recognised.

I do not object to the fact—indeed, I welcome it—that local councils will be able to raise more money through council tax. It is right in principle for more local services to be paid for by local taxes. As a localist, I firmly believe in that.

Let me clarify the questions that still need addressing. First, the better care fund that is part of the package is very much back-end loaded in the spending settlement, but there are pressures at the front end, too. The Secretary of State claimed in his statement that the issue of the 2% council tax increase raising more money in richer areas would be addressed through the distribution of the better care fund. Will he put some clear information in the Library to explain how that is going to be done?

[Barbara Keeley]

My hon. Friend has raised a key issue. For two years, there will be hardly anything from the better care fund. There will a maximum of only £400 million this year from the 2% precept, nothing from the better care fund, and only £105 million from the fund next year. The funding gap is increasing by £700 million, and the Local Government Association’s Councillor Izzi Seccombe has asked for that sum to be released.

[Mr Betts]

That was the next point that I was going to make. The Government should consider how the better care fund money could be distributed in a way that would help more poor authorities, but it would also be helpful—I know that the LGA has mentioned this—if more of that money could be provided until at least 2017-18, if not into the next financial year. I hope that the Secretary of State will consider that, because current back-end loading is a real problem.

The LGA has drawn my attention to the fact that the council tax base—which relates to the number of properties from which council tax will be raised—is assumed to rise by 7.8%. Will the Government explain precisely how they have made that calculation? It seems a very big increase indeed.

What account have the Government taken of the ability of clinical commissioning groups to help local authorities with their social care spending? In my own authority of Sheffield, the CCG has said that it faces a substantial reduction in its funding against the anticipated level for next year, but this year it is providing the council with £9 million of transfer funding to help it with its added social care provision. If that money is removed, any element from the better care fund or increased council tax will not be a substitute. I think that that is an issue for cross-departmental work.

The settlement will clearly result in cuts. The Secretary of State will argue that they will be less severe than those made in the last Parliament, but, of course, they are in addition to those that have already been made. In the last Parliament, when most of the larger percentage cuts were made in the metropolitan areas, which had the greatest needs and the greatest problems, we never once heard mention of a transitional arrangement to provide extra help for those councils. It has only come about now because the Government have developed a core spending power which includes council tax, and the richer councils happen to be more able to raise council tax. As they have suffered a bigger reduction in revenue support grant as a result of the initial spending announcement, a transitional funding arrangement has suddenly and magically been put in place for them.