Oral Answers to Questions

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have done my best to run a coalition Government, but I occasionally feel stuck in the middle with the Liberal Democrats.

The Government are delivering for the west country: we are sorting out the transport links and the local growth deals; putting money into road and rail connections; and helping with the vital airport and the routes back to London—and we will go on, because we want to close the income gap between the south-west and the rest of our country.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Q3. Care workers deliver the most basic support needed to provide a life of dignity to so many—bathing, cleaning, dressing, feeding—yet 300,000 fewer older people are enjoying that dignity now than four years ago. Is that because they do not need it, or because the Prime Minister has cut care budgets by £3.5 billion, while cutting taxes for millionaires?

[The Prime Minister]

The Government have put £3.2 billion of health money into social services, and the better care fund will start on 1 April, putting £5.3 billion into social care—something Labour argued should be delayed. However, there is a question that the hon. Lady has to answer. The shadow Chancellor said—he could not have been clearer—that

“there will be no additional funding for local government”,

which includes social services,

“unless we can find money from somewhere else…but we have not been able to do that in the case of local government.”

This is what Labour does. It goes round the country, promising more money for this, more money for that, and in its few moments of honesty, it reveals that it has not got any more money.