Adult Social Care

Margot James Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which has been addressed in the carers strategy.

Each year we should aim to use more NHS money on social care, and more money from the NHS budget could be given to councils for the integration of services led by health and wellbeing boards. Eventually, I would like to see the pooling of budgets. Social care has never been free at the point of need, and we know that the NHS will always be free at the point of need irrespective of anybody’s ability to pay. That is enshrined in the Health and Social Care Bill. Despite that, however, most people do not think they will have to pay for care and it can come as a dreadful shock, especially to the one in 10 people aged over 65 who end up paying more than £100,000 for care. Dilnot came up with a framework of shared and capped costs for individuals needing social care—shared costs between the individual and the state. I am sure that framework is receiving a great deal of attention from the Front-Bench teams, but I expect that however well the cross-party talks are going, it will take several years to introduce such a system if agreement can be reached. In the mean time, there is an urgent need to design a fairer system based on shared responsibility to pay.

There are uncontroversial steps that would not require substantial new resources and that could be taken now as part of a longer term plan. The legal framework and assessment processes that are used to decide who is entitled to what help could be sorted. We also need to fix the means test that we use to decide what we expect people to pay. That would help families to understand what help will be available and who needs to pay for what. Families would then be able to plan accordingly. The Government could ensure that people had access to independent advice on the best way of planning and paying for care and they could bring in a universal deferred payment scheme that would tackle the issue that so many people dread—selling their home to pay for residential care during their lifetime.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on all the work she does on this issue. Under the present system, people do have to sell their homes sometimes; does she agree that in such cases it would be far better if some of the accommodation were available to purchase on a leasehold basis so that the individual would still have an asset to pass on?

[Sarah Newton]

That is an extremely interesting idea, and I would expect no less from someone with such knowledge in this area. I am sure the Minister will want to take that point on board.

Going back to means-testing, we really need to face up to one of the biggest problems facing families—the meanest of means tests in this country: the test for residential care. Making the simple change of raising the upper threshold of the means test to £100,000 would benefit those on modest incomes who are heavily penalised under the current system. It would enable families who have worked hard all their lives and accumulated relatively modest assets—often the first generation of their family to do so—to have something to pass on to their children and grandchildren. It is an understandable and human desire to want to help the next generation. That change would cost £100 million. In this economic climate, such a figure might be too much all at once, but a staged increase in the upper limit would be a step in the right direction.

We are taking this approach to delivering the excellent policy of increasing the personal allowance for taxpayers to £10,000. Apart from spending NHS money more efficiently, there are other sound economic reasons for redirecting public money into social care. While the vast majority of care is given freely, more than 1.5 million people are employed in providing care. We need to recognise better the valuable and challenging work they do. I know that the Minister is doing good work on training and quality standards. Many care workers are paid low wages, so investment in this sector would have the direct impact of putting more money into the pockets of some of the poorest paid workers.

We also need to enable more working age informal carers to combine their caring responsibilities with paid employment. This is even more important as the pension age rises. Much emphasis is put on enabling working age parents to care for their children and remain in paid employment—with flexible working, help with child care costs and financial support through the tax system. We need to put as much emphasis on enabling working age people with other caring responsibilities to remain in employment. Otherwise, we are going to have ever-increasing out-of-work benefit costs to pay.

While I do believe that the Government are starting to develop the processes that could deliver better and fairer access to services and higher quality care, bolder and more determined action is needed to enable more rapid change. I hope that the Minister and the shadow Secretary of State for Health will listen carefully today and bring back to Parliament a shared vision and a clear plan on how together we as a country and as a society are going to create a good place for us all to grow old in.