Pride in Place

Lisa Smart Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

I would love to join my hon. Friend and I would love some fish and chips. On the £1.5 million, we are getting out the first tranche this autumn, so places will already be getting the investment. We are already signing memorandums of understanding to ensure we can move quickly. There is a critical role for Members of Parliament, working with the community, to ensure that the investment goes into the things that the community wants.

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

More money and power going into communities is of course a good thing, and it would be only right and proper for me to welcome some money going into my neighbouring area, represented by the hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra). I want to return to a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) about the broader question of funding for local government. Stockport council covers my patch. Some £3 in every £4 it spends goes on adult and child social care. That is not sustainable. Three years to do a social care review is a long time. Will the Minister explain what conversations she is having with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care to shorten that timeframe so we can crack on?

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

We are working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care. We understand the pressures that the social care system and its failures—which, again, we have to lay at the door of the Conversative party—are having on local government finance. We are doing what we can to give local government the flexibility to respond and increase the funding envelope, but there is a fundamental question about social care reform that is difficult and complex and that has been kicked into the long grass. We are determined to take this forward, but we have to do it carefully and we have to do it well so that it delivers the impact that everyone across the House wants to see.