Social Care Funding

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The care costs that people have at their home will be included in the amount calculated towards the cap, so what we are hoping for is the opposite—that this proposal will lead to an expansion of domiciliary services. I think that people will welcome that. At the heart of controlling our social care costs, both financially and on a human level, is a structure that allows more people to live at home, happily and healthily, for longer than is currently the case.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, to be credible on social care funding, any package needs to be fully funded, unlike yet more random, pie-in-the-sky, unfunded spending commitments?

[Mr Hunt]

Absolutely. There was a time when the Labour party would have considered a package that will be worth £1 billion a year by the end of the next Parliament to be a significant investment, but after its free spending ways of a billion here and a billion there, we are now talking real money.