Social Care (Liverpool)
Debate between Steve Rotheram and David Mowat(7 years, 8 months ago)
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David Mowat
I was just making the point that the figure the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside used was £130 million and the figure I have is £194 million. I accept that that number is not for today, and I also accept, as I have said many times in the Chamber, that the social care system is under pressure throughout the country, and Liverpool is part of that.
Steve Rotheram
I am trying to be helpful to the Minister. I quoted a former director of adult social care in Liverpool, Samih Kalakeche, who said:
“If we don’t do something within the next six months, I believe social services will not exist”
by the time that the Minister believes we will get the additional funding.
David Mowat
Today is not Budget day. I accept that the systems are under pressure. The precept has raised something, and Liverpool’s budget for social care is increasing next year, but it is fair to ask whether it is increasing enough given the pressures we are under—that is a reasonable point. My point about the £194 million figure was in response what was said earlier. Although I and the Government accept that there are pressures, it is important that we share accurate numbers with each other.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside also made the good point that there is now an increasing tendency for care to be provided in people’s own homes. If we look at the care home market over the past decade, we see that roughly speaking there are the same number of beds today as there were 10 years ago, and that is clearly in the face of a considerable increase in demand. That is because far more people are now being looked after through domiciliary packages in their own home, and that is the market we need to get right and make effective.
The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) raised the potential issue of councils being punished in the Budget for being efficient. I will be very disappointed if that is the case—it is not my understanding of what will happen—but it is a fair challenge, and we will have to see about that when the Budget comes out.
The hon. Lady raised a number of points about the STP. We all share the STP area, and there is work to do on it. I will make this point, however: she talked about cuts of £908 million, but those are cuts against an increase in demand—they call it the counterfactual—of 4% or 5% over the next period. The truth is that Cheshire and Merseyside will be getting real-terms increases in funding for every year up to 2020. Nevertheless, that does not mean that there are not challenges, for some of the reasons we have heard, such as demographics and all that goes with that.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) asked for a glimmer of light and hope; hopefully, between myself and the Chancellor tomorrow, we can achieve that. She also raised the cases of Sobia and Veronica and their care packages. It is difficult for me to respond to that, other than to say that the Care Act 2014 set out statutory requirements for what councils need to do. If those statutory requirements are not being met, and the way she described those cases implied that might be the case, that is clearly against the law and there is recourse either to the local authority itself or to the ombudsman. I would be happy to talk to her about that in more detail.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton made a number of points and started by talking about delayed transfers of care. He rightly said that I have talked on a number of occasions about variations between councils in delayed transfer of care performance. I will say that DTOC is not the only measure of the effectiveness of a social care system; it just happens to be one the easier ones that we can get a metric around. The fact is that if we look at the 10% worst and the 10% best councils in the country—Liverpool is round about the middle—the level of delayed transfers differs by a factor of around 20 or 30. I absolutely concede that social care systems work better with more money, but it is not just about money, because that is about different working practices and different people doing things in different ways. It is right that we have the debate about that, as well as about the need for more money.
The hon. Gentleman challenged me to name some councils that were much better than Liverpool in terms of delayed transfer of care, within a similar budget environment. I do not know what the budget environment is, but I have a list I can give him of councils that have fewer delayed transfers of care. As I said, Liverpool is not a particularly bad council, and I do not want to imply that it is, but Durham, Kirklees, Sunderland, Barnsley, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and St Helens all have at least 10 times less delayed transfers of care than Liverpool. I was taken to task at a recent Conservative councillors meeting, in which people said that having a good social services department is not just about delayed transfer of care; it is to do with a whole lot of other things. I absolutely accept that, but in a sense the hon. Gentleman started it, so I wanted to give him those figures.
Steve Rotheram
Will the Minister therefore pay tribute to Liverpool for what it has done and its innovative approach? My question was about councils that have had similar cuts to Liverpool of around 60%. None of the councils that he mentioned has had the same degree of cuts as Liverpool City Council.
David Mowat
The hon. Gentleman mentioned some councils that were in the south and I picked some that were not, but fair enough—I accept his point. He mentioned that, depending on the result of his election, he would have a summit. I would be delighted to attend, if he were to invite me—although who knows where I will be by then.
David Mowat
Indeed. On Thursday, I am going to Liverpool to give a talk at a care conference. I would be very happy during that visit to come along and talk to the council about some of the issues raised here today. As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, I am sure that the Government can learn from Liverpool. Frankly, we can all learn from each other. When I went to Whiston hospital and saw discharges to St Helens and to Liverpool, I saw some wonderful things happening there. Anyway, the offer stands.