Social Care Funding
Debate between Sarah Wollaston and Vince Cable(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Sir Vince Cable
My hon. Friend is right to point out the practicalities of this issue. That links to one of the current difficulties with domiciliary care, which is that providers are often not compensated for travel. I imagine that in a remote constituency that would be accentuated many times.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (LD)
Does my right hon. Friend accept that this could be done in a step- wise fashion? We could probably start immediately by introducing free personal social care for people at the end of their life, and we could then move forward to try to bring more people within that sphere. There is certainly a strong economic and moral case for introducing such care at the end of life.
Sir Vince Cable
That is a helpful and humane suggestion, and if we approach this whole question in terms of its practicality, rather than with abstract ideology, we might make some headway. What my hon. Friend suggests seems an eminently sensible way to start that process.
The last and most difficult issue is the one in which successive Governments have got hopelessly bogged down: the so-called catastrophe risk for the small number of people who are caught with prolonged expenses as a result of residential care. When I was in government the Dilnot report attempted to address that issue, but I think we have moved beyond that now. This is a classic problem of insurance, and it is now recognised in a way that it was not before—I think the current Prime Minister said this publicly—that the private insurance market cannot, and will not, deal with this problem. If there is to be insurance it must be social insurance, and large numbers of people will have to make a contribution to prevent the burden falling on a small number of unfortunates who contract long-term conditions, with all the costs involved.
That could be done in a variety of ways. One idea is a supplement to national insurance. Another idea from 10 years ago, which I had no problem with, is that if we are to solve the problem of people losing their inheritance, everyone who pays inheritance tax should pay a small supplement. That struck me as a good social insurance principle. Whether or not that formula was right, we have now got to a point of accepting that this is a social insurance problem, and there are different mechanisms for dealing with it. If we are reasonably grown up politically, we should find a way of closing that gap.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Sarah Wollaston and Vince Cable(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
T5. I know the Front-Bench team are totally committed to promoting growth in our economy. Will the Minister set out how he will boost employment and growth in rural areas while balancing the need to protect the environment from unrestricted development?
Vince Cable
Several local enterprise partnerships are specialising in developing the rural economy—the hon. Lady’s LEP is one of them. Such development should be dealt with properly at that level. At my level, I look forward to talking to the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about how we integrate economic development and rural development.
Higher Education and Student Finance
Debate between Sarah Wollaston and Vince Cable(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Vince Cable
I think the hon. Lady’s central point is that it is possible that some universities will be in financial difficulty. They already are under the existing system, and we are having to consider how universities in that position will be dealt with. The analogy is with the banking system. If banks collapse, the depositors are protected—in other words, the students are protected so that they can complete their education—but the management of failed institutions has to change. We are currently working through a failure regime to deal with institutions that find themselves in difficulties. The number that the hon. Lady mentions is almost certainly implausibly high, but there will be some.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State consider carefully how we can prevent students from being deterred from undertaking longer courses such as medicine and pharmacy—very able students in particular may be put off those courses—perhaps by introducing a three-year cap on fees?
Vince Cable
The answer to that question is similar to the one that I gave on the other STEM subjects. Medicine is a costly course, which is why continuing support is needed through the teaching grant from Government to keep graduate contributions at a moderate and reasonable level, and that is what we shall aim to do.