Business of the House

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend is right that Network Rail’s corporate governance structure is supremely difficult to follow. We have a commitment to make it properly accountable to its customers, and at the moment we are examining the structures and incentives of the industry to see how best to enable that. I hope that that helps her, but in the meantime I can only suggest that she redoubles her correspondence with Network Rail to see whether there is an appropriate solution to the position at Downham Market.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

More evidence has been reported this week of the growing crisis in the private care homes sector. Private care homes are desperately seeking more funding from local authorities, but they have had their funding cut by central Government. May we have a serious debate on the future of all aspects of long-term care, including funding, growing privatisation, which has caused a lot of the problem, and the risk to the elderly people in those care homes?

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the funding problems for private care homes. He will know that we have asked Andrew Dilnot to chair a commission that is shortly to report on the long-term structure of funding for residential and nursing home care. I anticipate that once that report is in the public domain, the House will want to debate it. The hon. Gentleman may have heard on the radio this morning that certain parts of the country have seen a 4% increase in spending on adult services, and we put an extra £2 billion into social care in the public expenditure announcement.