Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an estimate of the cost to (a) the public purse and (b) social care providers of increasing pay for staff in the social care sector by 65p per hour.

The Department has previously estimated that the cost to the public purse of raising minimum pay in adult social care to the National Living Wage plus 65p is approximately £600 million per year. This includes direct care staff only and excludes ancillary staff.

This estimate does not include the additional costs of higher pay which would be borne by the group of at least 221,000 ‘self-funders’ in care homes and using community care who pay for their own care.