Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce the funding gap in social care.

We have confirmed funding of £5.4 billion over 2022/23 to 2024/25 for adult social care reform. This includes over £3.6 billion to reform the social care charging system and enable all local authorities to move towards paying providers a fair rate for care and over £1.7 billion to institute major improvements across the social care system in England.

In addition, the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement 2022/2023 proposes an additional £3.5 billion to councils, an increase in local authority funding for 2022/23 of over 4% in real terms. This will ensure councils across the country have the resources they need to deliver key services. As part of this settlement, local authorities will have access to over £1 billion of additional resource specifically for social care in 2022/23.