Care Homes: England

Simon Danczuk Excerpts

Wednesday 13th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) for securing this important debate. Proper funding for care homes and social care can go a long way to reducing the pressures faced by our NHS. We must continue to do all we can to integrate social care and the NHS. I am worried that under this Government, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so, and care homes are becoming increasingly underfunded and overstretched.

Last November, figures were published showing that 5,247 patients were stuck in hospital beds. They were well enough to be discharged, but doctors and nurses felt they could not discharge them because of the lack of care available to the patient. The majority of such people are elderly. They cannot leave hospital because there is no space in their local care homes, and there are not the facilities or staff to look after them in their own homes. Our adult care facilities are not adequate for many people up and down the country, and the problem will only get worse, in many places, under the Government’s proposals.

I have some concerns about the new proposal to give councils the ability to raise council tax by 2%, which they will be able to spend only on social care. It looks like a good initiative at first glance, but council leaders and healthcare professionals can see that it is simply smoke and mirrors. The social care precept, as it has been labelled, will disproportionately affect poorer councils. Councils such as Rochdale will be worse off, while richer areas will be better off. The leadership of Rochdale Borough Council have rightly raised concerns about the policy. Because much of Rochdale’s housing is in council tax bands A and B, the proposal will raise only an extra £1.3 million. That is why poorer councils will be worse off. Rochdale council has already faced cuts to its budget of up to £200 million since 2010. We are struggling to cope, and services are being stripped to the bare bones.

The precept is welcome, but it will barely scrape the surface of the problem. The funding gap in social care and care home provision is getting worse. The Local Government Association estimates that it is growing by £700 million a year, and the King’s Fund estimates that it will be £3.5 billion by the end of this Parliament. The 2% increase will raise the least money in the areas of greatest need, so it will only increase health inequality, and it will vastly increase funds for councils that are already wealthy.

The most vulnerable have already seen their social care provision cut. The Joseph Roundtree Foundation points out that during the last Parliament, spending on social care fell by £65 per person in the most deprived communities, compared with a rise of £28 per person in the least deprived communities. The Government must do more to help the most vulnerable.

In the autumn statement, the Government announced that from 2017, funding expected to be worth £1.5 billion in 2019-20 will be available to local government. That funding will be included in the better care fund, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hove pointed out. It will go some way to addressing the funding gap and the disparities that will be caused by the 2% rise, but it will not be enough. The director of adult care for Rochdale, Sheila Downey, has made it clear to me that she does not know how much of that money will arrive in Rochdale, or how the funding gap will be filled until 2017.

The increase in the minimum wage will also have an effect on social care services and care homes, as has been pointed out. I welcome the raising of the minimum wage, but it must be accompanied by increased funding to allow for it. Care workers are some of the most underpaid, and they deserve their pay rise, so let us fund it properly. Rochdale’s director of adult care has raised that with me, because she is concerned about how she will find that money in her budget. She is working with local providers on the fees that will be required, but she is adamant that the pressure of the wage increase on social care budgets will not be fully met by the 2% increase. The widely cited ResPublica report from November, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hove mentioned, suggests that 37,000 care home beds could be lost if we do not fund the increase properly, because care providers will simply not be able to remain open. Alarm bells should be ringing. The loss of beds will need to be made up, and it will simply be made up in the NHS.

I finish by saying that I share the vision of an integrated health and social care system. We must achieve that if we are to have a health system that is fit for the 21st century. To achieve that, however, we cannot simply plug the gap; we need to invest in our social care and care homes now. Investment in care provision and homes can take the stress off the NHS. We saw all too recently in the case of the floods what a lack of investment can do. Let us not make the same mistake when it comes to social care.