Social Care Funding Debate
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Jim Cunningham
Main Page: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)Department Debates - View all Jim Cunningham's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Social Care Funding
Jim Cunningham Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Sir Vince Cable
Yes, there is a lot of joint thinking. We have the joint House of Commons Committees, and my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), as Chair, was critically involved in that. There is also a very good piece of work by the House of Lords, and the considerable brains of Lord Lawson and Lord Darling contributed to a cross-party consensus. A lot of think-tanking is going on in the vacuum created by the Government’s non-publication. There is no shortage of ideas, but we need to be clear what the problem is—and it is a very serious one.
Sir Vince Cable
If the hon. Gentleman lets me go through this, I will take an intervention.
The first point is the rapid growth of demand as a result of an ageing population. We all know that. As far as we can establish, because of ageing and the onset of dementia in particular, we have a growth in demand of about 3.5% a year. That is considerably in excess of the growth of the economy and the resources to fund it. That is the fundamental problem at the heart of all this. We have 800,000 people with dementia at the moment, which goes up to 1 million in 2025, rising to 2 million in 2030. At the moment, there is no clear picture of how this demand is to be met.
My second point, related to that, is that we have a large and growing hidden cost that is not quantified—unpaid caring. If we take dementia alone—just one dimension of adult social care—we have 350,000 carers at the moment, of whom 110,000 have had to give up their job, which is a cost to them, the Exchequer and their employers.
Sir Vince Cable
I will take an intervention, but I will return to the theme in a moment.
Mr Jim Cunningham
I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this timely debate. He refers to costs. The costs to families and individuals hit with dementia are 15% higher than they are for any other illness. They are about £3.5 billion because people have had to give up their jobs for all sorts of reasons. I hope that further assists him and I hope he agrees that we have to think about it.
Sir Vince Cable
Yes, that is quite right. We tend to use dementia, particularly the work of the Alzheimer’s Society and others, to illustrate the problems here but they are not unique. Many people with arthritis, diabetes and serious stroke conditions face the same set of problems.