Budget Resolutions

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

The King’s Fund, the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation estimate that the annual funding gap for social care will now reach £2.5 billion by 2019-20. That will have a crippling effect on the provision of social care, a sector that is already under severe strain and in desperate need of relief, but the Budget offered it nothing whatever.

The condemnation from social care professionals has been as universal as it has been damning. Margaret Wilcox, the president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, said she was “extremely disappointed” by the lack of extra funding and:

“Adult social care needs to be tackled as urgently and at least as equally as the needs of the NHS, in a way which recognises the inter-dependency of these services and encourages a collaborative approach.”

After the Government’s calamitous manifesto U-turn on the dementia tax, the country needed strong leadership and an appreciation of the seriousness of the situation facing social care. That same manifesto described the social care system as not working and promised to fix it, but there was no mention of social care in the Budget, let alone any new funds to address the chronic shortfall—another Tory manifesto commitment broken.

Nearly 1.2 million older people are estimated to have unmet care needs. The figure is up 48% since 2010 and up 18% from last year alone. The Budget offers no solutions to address the forecasted 150,000 additional deaths associated with constraints on health and social care. This is an issue of not just numbers but the Government’s failure to get a grip on the social care crisis.

Having worked in the sector, I have seen at first hand the amazing and vital work dedicated staff carry out on a daily basis. Now those staff who are employed by local authorities will have to carry on with their jobs knowing that their hard work, the squeeze on their living standards and years of wage stagnation still do not qualify them for a pay rise. When will the Government accept that these people are already going above and beyond, and deserve to have their service recognised?

Labour committed in our manifesto that, as we moved towards a new national care service, we would invest £8 billion over the course of the Parliament to stabilise the care sector. It is Labour that recognises that the sector is in crisis; it is Labour that appreciates the hard work of those who work in social care and would treat them with the respect they deserve; and it is Labour that would commit to taking active measures to solve this crisis, not merely offering false platitudes. The Budget, like the Government, is failing those in the social care sector.