Local Government Finance Settlement — House of Commons, 2016-12-15
Topic: Social Welfare
Gareth Thomas (Labour, Centre-left): This is a settlement that will leave the people of England paying higher taxes and getting worse public services for their money. For some, this settlement will still mean that the support they had hoped would be there for an elderly or vulnerable relative is not available. For others, visible public services, such as street cleaning and rubbish collection, will be cut ever closer to the bone, and even more youth centres and libraries will close While it would have been nice to see the statement in good time, at least we can be grateful that the crisis in the Conservative party over the price of a pair of trousers has abated enough to allow the chief of staff at No.10 to decide what the Secretary of State can say today Is not the real truth about this statement that there is no new money for local authorities to tackle the social crisis now? Moving new homes bonus money around in a few years’ time is not going to tackle the crisis now. On 18 July, when the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services was already raising the alarm, the Secretary of State said of social care, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris): "I do not accept that it is underfunded."—[Official Report, 18 July 2016; Vol. 613, c. 530.] Why has it taken so long for the Secretary of State to spot that there might be a problem after all This is a crisis that Ministers still do not seem to grasp the severity of, with £4.6 billion axed from social care budgets as a result of their cuts since 2010, and 1.2 million people, according to Age UK, not getting the care they need. There are even senior figures in the Secretary of State’s own party with a closer grip on reality than he appears to have, such as Lord Porter, the chairman of the Local Government Association, who notes: "Services supporting our elderly and vulnerable are at breaking point now." Does the Secretary of State share our view that we did not need to be in this position? Does he remember how, before the 2010 general election, senior figures in his party chose to kill off serious cross-party talks on how to fund social care going forward Once Ministers finally began to realise that there might actually be a bit of a problem, they reached for that old Conservative favourite: blaming councils themselves. Ministers like to attack councils, but is not the truth that councillors and local authority staff up and down the country are doing their best to plug the funding gap to cope with huge rising demand for care and increasing costs When will the Secretary of State address the worsening postcode lottery for social care? In the most deprived areas of the country, social care spending fell by £65 per person, but it rose by £28 per person in the least deprived areas. Will he not accept that the rising social care precept will only further entrench this inequality? I gently ask of him: is this really the best time to be choosing to cut corporation tax on Amazon, Sports Direct and the big banks Since the Prime Minister came to office, there has been much talk of help for those who are only just about managing their finances. That seems to have gone out of the window today as the Prime Minister decides to put up the council tax in every part of England again. To borrow her words, "If you are from an ordinary working-class family, life is much harder than many people in Downing Street realise. You have your own home but you worry about the cost of living, the state of your area, and the services you rely on, and you also worry whether you can pay the tax bill at the end of each month." Today she decided to make it just a bit harder for them to manage. On top of council tax rises this year, there is 3% in 2017-18 and more again in 2018-19, and by 2020, a 17% increase in council tax compared with 2015—all decided in Downing Street. Who would have thought it: the Conservatives, who once claimed to be in favour of low taxes, putting up taxes every year until the next election The truth is that social care is in crisis. This settlement means even deeper cuts in funding and worse public services. Is not the truth that the people of England deserve better?