Local Government Finance Settlement

Clive Betts Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point and it is worth talking about it a bit more. As he rightly says, the good news is that 97% of councils have accepted the four-year settlement. That means that 10 councils have not, including, unfortunately, his local council, Harrow. In practice, that means that those councils will have an annual, year-by-year settlement, which will deny local people the certainty that they seek. It also means that they have not put together efficiency plans, as the other councils will have done. It is a shame that they did not accept the settlement. That was entirely up to them, but it will have consequences.

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

Does the Secretary of State agree that his statement still leaves life very challenging indeed for most local authorities dealing with social care and the crisis that it is in? Will he confirm that even £900 million goes only part-way towards filling the £2.5 billion to £3.5 billion gap that the LGA, the Nuffield Trust and the King’s Fund believe will exist by the end of the spending review period? Why has he chosen not to pay the new homes bonus money through the better care fund, which would have enabled him to target the money at the poorest authorities, which raise the least through the precept?

Finally, I do not know whether the Secretary of State saw that Simon Stevens and Stephen Dorrell came before the Communities and Local Government Committee yesterday. They said that integration between health and social care was desirable, but that that of itself will not solve the problems of social care in the longer term. Will he agree to a much wider review, including the full involvement of the LGA, to try to get cross-party agreement for a genuine, sustainable solution for the longer term, which will need all-party support?

[Sajid Javid]

I always take very seriously what the Chair of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government has to say, and I know that he considers such matters carefully. To answer his questions, he may recall that at the spending review last year the LGA asked for, I think, £2.9 billion of extra funding for adult social care by the end of the Parliament. The spending review provided more than that—£3.5 billion—and the changes that we have announced today add another £900 million on top of that £3.5 billion. That is a significant increase, and even more so when we look back at what the LGA was considering just last year.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the allocation of the £240 million that would otherwise have gone into the new homes bonus. He will know that the allocation of the improved better care fund, which is worth £1.5 billion by the end of this Parliament, takes into account the council tax-raising powers of each local area. The £240 million is allocated based on relative need, and I think that that is the best way to do it.