Social Care Funding

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley]

It is really up to the Secretary of State, whose party has not produced any proposals, to answer that. On the point about cross-party working, it is the Conservative party that has no proposals. The only proposals it has come out with are the damaging ones that have now been abandoned.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is doing a very good job of reminding the Government that they are the ones in power and the ones with the decision-making powers. If they support the Select Committees’ report, they should bring forward their Green Paper and adopt them all in full. They have the opportunity to do that.

I want to ask my hon. Friend about unmet need and the growing gap between social care funding and continuing healthcare funding. I am increasingly seeing severely disabled individuals in my constituency with very high levels of need being bounced from pillar to post between continuing healthcare funding and social care funding, neither of which is meeting their needs. What does she suggest the Government do to bridge that gap?

[Barbara Keeley]

I suggest that the Government start with the cash injection that our social care system needs. The Labour party promised a £1 billion injection upfront to ease us out of the crisis and £8 billion across this Parliament. I suggest that that would be a starting point and that the Conservative party then tell us how it will fund social care in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

Through the Barnett formula, we have made available funding for Scotland today, which in England we are spending on adult social care. I very much hope the SNP Government in Holyrood will make sure they do the right thing by this funding and ensure that it goes to helping people get out of hospital when they medically can leave hospital but need care once they get out. I think we are agreed between us that the SNP Government in Holyrood should spend this money wisely.

[Melanie Onn]

I am keen to learn how much extra my constituency is getting, given that the Secretary of State is doing a roll call of all that. I also wish to ask him about the comments he made about the streams of funding for social care and healthcare. Is he proposing that funding would be ring-fenced? There is a concern that when we try to integrate the two, urgent healthcare will always come before social care.

[Matt Hancock]

That need not necessarily be the case. It was slightly disappointing that the hon. Lady, who is normally a great champion of cross-party working, did not welcome the £780,000 extra for Grimsby, but you can’t win them all. The people of Grimsby need to know that we are there to support them and to support their local NHS.

I now turn to the long-term funding pressures. The lifetime care costs of a 65-year-old today are about £45,000 on average, but those total average costs that people face are not distributed evenly. Some people face no care costs at all, whereas the care costs for someone with dementia who lives into their 90s can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. As a society, that is the challenge we face, yet right now there is no way to predict or insure this potential financial burden. We are committed to ensuring that everyone has access to the care and support they need. However, as has always been the case, that must be based on the principle of shared responsibility. With sensible planning, people should not have to fear the risk of losing everything. The adult social care Green Paper, which will be published later this year, will bring forward a range of ideas to address the long-term challenge. We want to learn from what has been proven to work, with one example being the auto-enrolment pension reforms, which have been taken forward on a cross-party basis over a decade. The rate of opting out has been remarkably low, and this has put in place the foundations for the strengthening of our pensions system over time. The Green Paper will propose a range of options and ideas, learning from both the UK and from around the world.