Local Government Funding

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I suggest kindly to the hon. Lady that she reflects on the fact that more council houses have been built in the past seven years than were built in the previous 13 years of a Labour Government.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

The Secretary of State listed some of the initiatives to encourage house building, but he did not include the land release fund, which has helpfully just given £4 million to Paignton to help get three housing projects under way.

[Sajid Javid]

I apologise to my hon. Friend for not listing that particular fund; there are just so many places where we are taking action to make sure that this country deals with the housing crisis—the housing crisis that was left behind, as he knows, by the previous Labour Government.

Let me turn now to social care. I am under no illusions about the pressures that councils face in addressing this issue. It is one of the biggest social issues that we face in our country, which is why we have put billions of pounds of extra funding into the sector over the past 12 months. We have also announced a further £150 million for the adult social care support grant in 2018-19. That will be allocated according to relative needs, and will help councils build on the work that they do to support sustainable local care. It comes on top of an additional £2 billion that was announced in the spring Budget for adult social care over the next three years. With the freedom to raise more money more quickly for the use of the social care precept that I announced this time last year, we have given councils access to some £9.4 billion of dedicated funding for adult social care over the next three years. However, we know that there is still much more to do and that that funding alone will not fix this issue, as it is a long-term challenge that requires long-term systemic change. The publication of a Green Paper this summer on future challenges within adult social care will set us on a path to securing that change.