Autumn Statement

Clive Betts Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I welcome my hon. Friend to his role as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee. I know that he will do a brilliant job and that he will hold me and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to account strongly and tenaciously on everything to do with cancer and public health. I welcome that, because they are very important areas.

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

To come back to social care, in the Chancellor’s previous role as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, he will remember arguing for a £7-billion increase in social care funding. Will he confirm that today’s package is nothing like that? Will he further confirm that much of it is coming from council tax increases, which give most to the richest councils and take proportionately most from the poorest households? Finally, will not the rest of local government face real-terms cuts to essential services? This is austerity mark 2, with the prospect of financial collapse for many councils up and down the country.

[Jeremy Hunt]

I have to say that I think local councils are welcoming today’s announcement because the biggest item of expenditure that worries them the most is their social care budgets, and this is the biggest-ever increase in the social care budget. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has read the report into social care that the Health and Social Care Committee produced when I was the Chair—I sometimes worry whether people actually read the reports—and he is right to point to that £7-billion figure. That was made up of about £5 billion in core funding and £2 billion for the Dilnot reforms. Today, we are delivering nearly that £5 billion of funding and the Dilnot reforms will happen at a later stage, so it is not everything at once, but it is broadly consistent with what I recommended.