Health and Social Care Budgets Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Louise Ellman
Main Page: Louise Ellman (Independent - Liverpool, Riverside)Department Debates - View all Louise Ellman's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) on securing this important debate. I want to draw attention to the crisis in social care in Liverpool. The background is the severe cuts put on a city with a very low council tax base. Some 80% of Liverpool’s properties are in council bands A and B. Cuts to Government funding will reach 68% by 2020, resulting in a £90 million cut in funding for adult social care. The consequences up to now have been a reduction in social care packages from 14,000 to 9,000.
There are two aspects to social care: domiciliary care that enables people to live independently in their own homes, and social care that enables people to be discharged from hospital. Both are equally important. I certainly welcome the announcement of an additional £27 million for Liverpool over the next three years from the £2 billion additional allocation. That money is very important and has staved off an immediate crisis, but it will be eaten up by demographic changes.
For example, the increase in the number of people aged 65 and over will lead to an £8 million increase in cost next year. The increase in funding required to implement the living wage means that an additional £25 million is required by 2019-20. Welcome as that £27 million is, it will be eaten up by those increases. The situation is compounded by an error by the Department for Communities and Local Government in assessing how much funding could be raised from Liverpool’s council tax. I gather that that error has now been rectified, but it confused the situation.
What do we need? Additional funding now is welcome, but we need long-term consistent funding related to need and more integration between the national health service and social care. I recognise the problems that the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), identified, but a move towards integration is essential. Liverpool is innovative and is already trying to do that, but it needs funding and general support from the Government to enable it to work constructively with the NHS.