Adult Social Care Funding

Debate between Christopher Chope and Steve Brine

Thursday 6th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine]

Of course I want to work—as will the current Care Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price)—with the respected former Care Minister, and with any other Members who have any sensible suggestions. Taxation is of course a matter for the Chancellor at financial events, and there will obviously be a Budget later in the year.

On the areas where there are care challenges, we have picked up 12 local areas for review, as the Secretary of State said earlier this week. We have published the details that are suitable for the review, which we have developed from the dashboard criteria. We will give those involved every possible support, as we do with the inspection regime for hospitals, for instance. Such inspections are to get hospitals out of special measures and get them to a better place, and we will do the same for those areas. I will be very happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman. In fact, if he had not asked me, I would have offered to meet him.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

If the Government’s plan is to reduce the pressures on adult social care, will my hon. Friend explain why the Dorset clinical commissioning group is proposing to close down the St Leonard’s community hospital, which provides really good services at the moment and is approved of by the community?

[Steve Brine]

No, I cannot go into the detail of why that is, as I suspect my right hon. Friend realises. There will be a one-NHS STP process in his area, and it will have to come up with proposals that meet the five criteria for any reconfiguration. As he will know, there were previously four criteria that had to be met, but there are now five; Simon Stevens, the chief executive of the NHS, has added a fifth on patient safety. My right hon. Friend mentioned St Leonard’s hospital, and any reconfiguration or change of service in relation to it will have to be considered in that context.

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Steve Brine

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point, which was also covered in the recent Adjournment debate on this subject, which received what I can describe only as a rather woolly response from the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Gauke). He said that, basically, something was going to happen in this Parliament but the Government were not quite sure what or when. That was not good enough. We need an opportunity to look at the whole issue of transferrable tax allowances, and allowances in the tax and benefit system that recognise the family and marriage.

Returning to the issue of fairness, two people on £50,000 a year with children will not have to pay the high income child benefit charge, whereas a family with children with one person earning over £60,000 will have to pay it.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

On the issue of fairness, would my hon. Friend have any truck with the idea of limiting child benefit to, say, the first two or three children, regardless of the parents’ income, which would retain the universal element?

[Mr Chope]

There is a whole host of ideas going round. There was a time when no child benefit or allowance was payable for the first child, on the basis that parents should take responsibility for that child and bear the costs themselves, but, if they had any more, they could expect the state to help them. My hon. Friend’s point illustrates further the fact that this measure should have been the subject of proper consultation and draft clauses, so that we could have had a debate on it in the wider context of universal benefits. Instead, it was announced at the party conference and implemented in this way.