Vulnerable Adults: Transport

Debate between Rebecca Long Bailey and Angela Rayner

Thursday 21st January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

Before my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) leaves the Chamber, I would like to wish him a very happy birthday and congratulate him on his point of order.

I thank the Minister for attending what I have no doubt will be a lively and informative debate. It might be helpful if I first define what specific kind of transport I am focusing my comments on today. Adults with special educational needs often attend day centres or schools. Until recently, many councils have provided accessible transport to allow the most vulnerable to access these facilities, often by way of a bus or the provision of a driver plus an expert escort on board to ensure safety. That support is a vital service in many communities, providing independence for those with special needs and peace of mind for their parents and carers. It also provides a much-needed break for the unsung heroes of social care who struggle with the commitments of family life and work alongside caring for their loved ones.

Let me set a backdrop for the harrowing tale I am about to tell. In 2014 my local council, Salford City Council, was ordered by the Government to find £25 million of so-called savings in its budget. That was in addition to £97 million in spending cuts that it had already suffered since 2010. As an already efficient and well-respected council, it had already sought to find every possible means of saving money through genuine efficiency gains. It had fought for four years to find ways to save money or reduce spending here and there in order to ensure that all services for the most vulnerable residents across Salford were unaffected. By 2014 the council was way beyond being able to salami-slice budgets and, as a result, was forced to look at making real changes to a wide range of services. Our mayor, councillors and council officers were put in the agonising position of having to prioritise which types of care they provided and to determine who was the most vulnerable, instead of simply protecting all the vulnerable, as it had done before.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

This year, £16.4 million has been taken out of Tameside council’s budget for adult social services, £11.1 million has been taken out of Oldham council’s budget for adult social services and a deficit of over £20 million has been forecast for Tameside general hospital. Cuts to front-line local services not only cost more in terms of the quality of life for the individuals affected, but cost us all more in the long run. Does my hon. Friend agree that these cuts are really short-sighted and damage not only our local services, but our NHS, which has to pick up the pieces afterwards?

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

I thank my hon. Friend for those helpful comments. I completely agree. As she will hear, Tameside is not alone in suffering such savage cuts.

Salford City Council had to face the difficult decision to cut the in-house provision of vulnerable adult transport for over 200 families across the city, amounting to a £500,000 cut in transport support for those with special needs. That was alongside the £400,000 that the Government’s cuts took from the provision of adult social care support to those with learning difficulties in the same year. I must add that prior to the cuts the transport service was rated excellent as a council service. It was not inefficient and there were no plans to cut it had the funding been available.

Commenting on the Government cuts at the time, our mayor, Ian Stewart, stated that

“this is not about efficiencies any more. These cuts will cause untold damage to the services we provide”.

Even in this desperate funding crisis, the council worked hard to make the best of a terrible financial situation. In partnership with the individuals affected and their carers, appropriate alternative arrangements were made. Transport was not ended for anyone until suitable alternative arrangements had been agreed. The good news is that a number of parents were generally happy with the council’s new arrangements, because they can individualise their journey times. That means that they are not spending significant amounts of time on transport, which previously resulted in some people arriving at the day centre in an agitated mood. The council is very much aware that the change is not universally popular, and it continues to work with any individuals who express concern. The fact remains, however, that it does not hold sufficient funding to provide an in-house passenger transport service as it was provided.

I have spoken at length to some of the families affected. I have heard their tales of despair and their worry about which other services that they rely on might be cut in future. I have listened to the mayor, our councillors and council officers, who have frankly lost faith in the Government’s commitment to provide a welfare system, which should be there to look after the vulnerable. In the wider context, for the 2014-15 financial year, a total of £4 million had to be cut from community health and social care, £2.4 million from public health, £4.7 million from support services, £5.6 million from education, and £4 million from environment and community safety. These are not “efficiency savings”—they are cuts to front-line services.

Perhaps in 2010 there were areas where genuine savings could be made with minimal knock-on effects on front-line services, but by the time £97 million has been taken from the budget, there is nothing left to cut but vital front-line services. Even the Prime Minister’s own council leader had to explain this principle to him following the now infamous letter in which he criticised his local council’s cuts to front-line services. By 2016-17, Salford City Council will have to make budget cuts of £188 million in order to balance its budget; £83 million of that sum alone is the amount by which the Government grant has been cut. That is a cut of over 43%, but in real terms the figure is much higher.

This is not just an issue for Salford City Council. Every council has faced vast reductions in funding from central Government, and my local council is not alone in having to cut transport for those with special educational needs. Countless numbers of local authorities have reduced or completely ceased to provide transport for vulnerable adults. It is rather tenuous, therefore, for the Government to argue that all these councils have made the choice to cut such an important service when they could instead have made efficiency savings in their back offices. These councils have no such choice any more.

When my constituents visited me about this issue, my first reaction was to try to locate funding elsewhere. What about the northern powerhouse, I thought, all that money that is supposedly being unlocked in the north—surely Salford’s vulnerable people deserve a piece of that? When I examined the detail I became even more disillusioned. We have often heard the Chancellor wax lyrical about his so-called devolution revolution, which he argues will enable areas such as Salford to raise and spend revenues locally, but he fails to acknowledge that councils in poorer areas have very limited revenue-raising capacities.

For instance, the policy to allow councils to set and retain their own business rates without the safeguard of a grant scheme has the potential to create severe inequalities among different areas of Britain. Indeed, the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has said that while he agrees with the principle, it would be “inconceivable” not to keep a grant scheme. He stated:

“does this have the potential to disadvantage deprived areas and advantaged rich ones?..Absolutely!”

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has expressed concern that such a move would create winners and losers, with poorer areas seeing a fall in revenue. Let us not forget that we are already seeing disparities between local authority cuts. Between 2010 and 2015, Salford saw cuts of £210 per head, while authorities such as Epsom and Ewell saw only a £15 per head decrease. With local government funding being cut in terms of the grant by 56% by the end of this Parliament, it is frankly terrifying for Members like me whose local councils will see even more significant reductions in their spending power.

The same issue arises with regard to the social care precept, which would allow councils to raise council tax by 2% in order to fund social care. The president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services has warned:

“The Council Tax precept will raise least money in areas of greatest need which risks heightening inequality.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rebecca Long Bailey and Angela Rayner

Thursday 15th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

6. What steps she is taking to tackle pregnancy and maternity discrimination in the workplace.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

12. What steps she is taking to tackle pregnancy and maternity discrimination in the workplace.

Local Government Finance (Tameside and Oldham)

Debate between Rebecca Long Bailey and Angela Rayner

Tuesday 23rd June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. After five years of austerity, it is becoming increasingly difficult for well-run councils such as Tameside and Oldham to protect the most vulnerable from the impact of Government policies.

Demand for core services, particularly in social care—formerly, I worked in home care—continues to rise steeply, while funds are being drastically cut. Who will pay the price for the mismatch between the demand for services and the resources available to fund them? Will it be the 5,000 adult care service users in Tameside who have a physical difficultly, a frailty or a sensory impairment? Will it be the 4,000 people who use reablement services to help them live at home, or the people the council supports by providing nursing or residential care? Will it be the 1,300 mental health adult social care users, the 556 adults receiving learning disability services or the 410 vulnerable looked-after children in Tameside? What about the 1 million telephone callers to the council every year? Should staff just ignore the ringing phone, stop cleaning the 715 km of highways and footpaths every month, stop emptying the 45,000 wheelie bins and forget the 140 tonnes of street sweeping and the 290 tonnes of litter per month?

The Local Government Association believes that by 2020 the money available to fund some basic but essential council services, which we all rely on, will have shrunk by 90% in real cash terms. More than 60% of council spending will be on adult and child social care. Local authorities up and down the country are facing difficult choices.

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

My local authority, Salford City Council, is in a similar situation: up to £4.7 million is going to be cut from adult services alone. Its Labour mayor has tried to limit the effect of such swingeing cuts by implementing the living wage and employment standards charter, supporting local people into work with free nursery care and raising £5 million from the proceeds of crime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend is right. I know her constituency well enough to realise that there is much more that unites us than divides us, not least on the issue of needing funds to provide basic services for our constituents.

Of course, not every local authority is facing the same agonising choices. Analysis by the all-party Local Government Association has shown that Labour local authorities have suffered average losses of £108 per person in spending power, while Tory councils have lost just £38 per head. Is that the Government’s one-nation Britain? Of the 50 worst-hit councils, 43 are Labour-run; of the 50 least-hit councils, 42 are Tory-run.

Even using the Government’s own carefully constructed figures on spending power, the unfairness is stark. Tameside has seen a 3.6% cut in spending power for 2015-16 alone—a cut of £74.77 for households in my constituency. Meanwhile, Oxfordshire’s spending power has risen by 1.3%, and Cheshire East’s has risen by 1.5%. Let us be clear: households in my constituency have lost almost £75 each, while households in Witney have gained almost £22 and those in the Chancellor’s Tatton constituency have become £25 richer. The number of food banks in Tameside has increased sixfold under a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who are busily feathering their own nests.

The Chancellor has announced a so-called stability Budget on 8 July, which will contain another £12 billion of cuts that will no doubt hit out-of-work benefits, disability allowances and personal social services. Inevitably, local government services will be hit once again.

The Independent Commission on Local Government Finances said today that councils are already at a cliff edge, which means that everyday services may not exist for much longer. People who depend on council services are already teetering on the edge of that cliff, and the Chancellor’s so-called stability Budget will push them over.

Tameside Council is forecasting that £4.5 million of cuts will be made to social care by the Chancellor’s stability Budget. Cuts to benefits would add another £4.5 million of extra pressure on council services. One cannot be taken without the other. Those cuts come on top of the £1 million cuts to public health services already announced in Tameside. The total in-year cut for Tameside will be up to another £10 million, and the situation in Oldham is exactly the same.

We are not alone. Sheffield Hallam University estimates that the Chancellor’s £12 billion of welfare cuts will take £5.2 billion a year out of the pockets of families in the north. Coincidentally, almost the same amount is lost in tax evasion every year. I look forward to the Tories pursuing multimillionaire tax avoiders with the same fervour as they are punishing poor working people, but I am not holding my breath.

I have no doubt that Tameside and Oldham Councils will continue the difficult work of managing the cuts and tackling the enormous challenges they face, but I fear that, for all their best intentions, many local people will inevitably suffer. There has to be a better way. I know that many Government Members genuinely believe in local democracy and local government, and will join me in congratulating Tameside, Oldham and many other local authorities for their work in stimulating private-sector investment, creating decent jobs, providing strong civic leadership, innovating services and being prepared to do things differently.

All that is at risk if local government services continue to be the whipping boy for austerity. That is why we need a new settlement for local government in our country. Devolution and more local decision making will undoubtedly play their part and I welcome the progress made, particularly in the development of the northern powerhouse. However, devolution is only part of the answer; in itself, it will not solve the funding crisis and cannot be used by central Government as an excuse to transfer responsibilities.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

My hon. Friend shares my keen interest in the devo Manc proposal. In light of the facts she set out, there is concern—among northern MPs, in particular—that Ministers see it as a chance to palm off the blame rather than hand down the power. Does she agree that, whatever the final shape of local government in Manchester, resources much match responsibilities?

[Angela Rayner]

Once again, my hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. She anticipates my next point. If the northern powerhouse is to succeed, it cannot be used as a Trojan horse for more cuts. There must be a fairer settlement for local government: a settlement where reductions in spending do not fall on the most vulnerable in society and the places where they rely on a strong public sector; that puts public need first; that takes a place-based approach to finance, ending the madness whereby cuts to preventive local government services only fuel increasing demand for more expensive NHS treatment; and that helps to cut the appalling gap in outcomes between the most affluent and most deprived areas, ensuring that everyone has an equal chance to get on in life, regardless of where they started.