Adult Social Care in Shropshire: Government Funding

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government funding for adult social care in Shropshire.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. Before I start to outline the concerns we have about Government support for paying for adult social care costs in Shropshire, I will put forward two historical contexts to try to explain to the Minister a little as to why and how we got into this situation.

In 2004, the Labour-controlled Shropshire Council increased council tax in one year by 16.4%. That was the year before my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) and I were elected for the first time. I am sure they will recall, as I do, the palpable anger, fear and frustration of many people on low fixed incomes in the face of that massive tax increase. When our party came into office, we incentivised councils to freeze council tax because there had been so much frustration and such a backlash against the massive increases, not only in Shropshire, but in Labour-controlled councils up and down the country where there had been double-digit increases in council tax.

Our local council, which became Conservative in 2005, decided to dutifully follow the advice and froze council tax, not just for one year, but for seven years in a row—clearly to the delight of local ratepayers. The council is now telling me that the Government have not adequately filled the shortfall in revenue that it inevitably had to face as a result of the freezing of council tax. The Minister may correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding from Shropshire Council officials is that the additional support that was envisaged to come from Government tapered off quickly, leaving the council without additional support of, it now estimates, in the region of £20 million per annum.

Labour shadow Ministers always criticise repeated references to their management and stewardship of the economy, but let us not forget that in the good times the Labour party, when it was in office, borrowed £50 billion a year, sold off our gold reserves at rock-bottom prices and put all these new hospitals on private finance initiative contracts, with the result that we will pay exorbitant interest rates for decades.

When the financial crash came in 2008, the kitty was bare. I am not ashamed of repeatedly referring to that. People forget about it, but the Minister will remember the sheer gravity of the situation when we came to office. As a nation, in 2009-10, we were borrowing £152 billion a year.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Does he agree that it is not only about the financial pressures on Shropshire Council but the domino effect of the under-provision of social care in Shropshire on the acute trust, and how that affects A&E waiting times? Finally, does he agree that there needs to be cross-party consensus and working together nationally? We do not need another review; we have had lots of those. We know what the problem is. We now need solutions, and that has to be done on a cross-party basis, but quickly.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for that intervention. I could not agree more.

When we came into office, we of course had to rein in expenditure, and all Government Departments had to have cuts. The cuts to local government have, of course, adversely affected our council. I am pleased that the country’s annual deficit is now below £28 billion a year, down from the £152 billion a year that we inherited. However, now that we are getting the finances under control in a more sustainable way, I urge the Minister to take the message back to the Treasury that we need to increase public funding of our councils, so that they can start to meet the huge rise in demand for adult social care in our county. I will explain why Shropshire is uniquely affected.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Yes, very much so, and I am sure that some of my colleagues from Shropshire will take up that point in interventions. However, I will make a few quick points before I take another intervention.

During the 2017 general election, we gave the impression to the electorate that somehow they would have to sell their homes in order to pay for their long-term care. I have to tell the Minister that I had never come across such levels of bewilderment, frustration and anger on the streets of Shrewsbury as I did following that announcement, and have not done so subsequently. Whoever came up with that policy for the then Conservative Government was really out of tune with the thinking of many of our natural voters.

Even my own beloved mother—this is the first time I have referenced her in 15 years—Halina, who is a staunch Conservative supporter, said to me, “I haven’t made sacrifices all of my life, I haven’t done the right thing, paid the right amount of tax and done all the right things, for you now to force me to sell my home to look after my long-term social care needs.” I think my mother exemplified the strength of feeling across the United Kingdom.

I am convinced that that policy lost us our majority at the 2017 general election; it was certainly a major contributory factor. I am therefore very pleased that the Prime Minister has indicated that in this Parliament a solution will be found. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin said, we need radical, innovative thinking that has the support of our voters.

Shropshire MPs meet the council on a regular basis. We Shropshire MPs work as a team and hunt as a pack, and one of our greatest strengths is the unity between us all. In fact, we are seeing our council this Friday, 24 January, which happens to be my 48th birthday. I am looking forward to a few bottles of beer from my colleagues during the meeting.

[Mark Pritchard]

Shropshire Lad.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Shropshire Lad. The clear message from Peter Nutting, the leader of our council, from the chief executive, and from the other senior councillors is that social care is their top concern. The Minister will know—she played a part in it as well—that in the last Parliament, MPs from rural shire counties worked constructively together to get a change to the funding mechanisms for our schools. Rural shire counties were unfairly discriminated against in comparison with inner-city, metropolitan areas. In this Parliament it is my intention, and that of many other Members, to make social care the No. 1 issue, because we have to listen to what our councillors are telling us.

There is no doubt in my mind that the black hole of approximately £20 million a year that the council faces is affecting not only adult social care costs but many other services in our county. The leader of the council has to take money away from repairing potholes, and all the other things for which the council is responsible, in order to manage the black hole that is staring them in the face.