Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of the National Living Wage on the provision of adult social care.

The new National Living Wage (NLW) will ensure that care workers are better paid for the vital work they do. The Government engaged with the social care sector, including care providers and the costs of the NLW were considered as part of the Spending Review. The overall costs to local authorities of providing social care were also considered.

We recognise that demand for social care is growing and that councils will need to increase the price they pay for care to cover costs such as the NLW.

The Spending Review settlement provides £3.5 billion of new support for social care by 2019/20. Councils will be able to introduce a new Social Care Precept, which will allow an increase of 2% above the existing threshold to be added to council tax, raising up to £2 billion that has to be spent exclusively on adult social care. By 2019/20 an extra £1.5 billion will have been made available to be included in the Better Care Fund. Taken together, the Social Care Precept and the Better Care Fund will mean local government has access to funding to increase social care spending in real terms by the end of the Parliament.