Local Government and Social Care Funding

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whitford]

I utterly agree and, obviously, the Department’s name was changed to the Department of Health and Social Care to reflect that need for integration, yet that is not the discussion we are hearing.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making a valuable contribution. One of the big problems in social care is the lack of social workers, which local authorities cannot fund because of the gigantic cuts conducted over the years by this Government. It is about time we faced up to the fact that austerity has gone on far longer than the second world war and, quite frankly, rationing.

[Dr Whitford]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the workforce, but in both the NHS funding settlement and the forward plan we see a big injection into NHS England, but no extra funding for Health Education England or for public health. Preventing illness is the cheapest thing we can do yet, for decades, Governments of all colours in all places have failed to do that. Unfortunately, the long-term plan does not do it, either.

Age UK talks about 1.5 million people being left without sufficient care and support at home, and it describes the number of people needing elderly social care increasing by almost 50% since 2010, but local authority-funded patients in England are down by a quarter over that time. A third of patients depend on family support, but 2 million carers are over 65 themselves, and 400,000 of them are over 80. Look at the burden we are putting on elderly people to care for their elderly partners, often without respite or support.