Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department took to offer financial assistance to providers of overnight social care to adults in advance of the judgment of Royal Mencap v Blake-Tomlinson in July 2018.

The Department continuously reviews the pressures facing the social care sector and works to ensure stability; not just for vulnerable service users, but also for the many thousands of low paid workers within the sector.

Before the Court of Appeals judgment in Royal Mencap v Blake-Tomlinson the Government worked closely with stakeholders from the social care sector to ensure we had a clear understanding of the impact the sector could face due to historic liabilities for National Minimum Wage back pay. During this time the Government explored options to minimise any impact on the social care sector.

At the Spring Budget 2017 the Government provided an additional £2 billion to councils for social care. The pressure arising from enforcement of National Minimum Wage for sleep-in shifts was one of the costs the Government took account of in deciding to provide this sum of additional funding.