Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2021-11-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): You would not know from the Budget that our health and care system is in crisis, made worse by the fact that we are still in the middle of a pandemic that claimed 1,097 lives last week. One of the key factors in coping with the crisis caused by the covid pandemic has been the commitment of our health and care staff and the dedication of unpaid carers to support their family members, yet the Budget contained no costings for training and education budgets for the NHS workforce, no extra resources to improve support for unpaid carers, and no extra investment to meet the immediate needs for funding to relieve the crisis in social care The response to the Budget from the social care sector has been damning. Care England, which represents care providers, said there "will be serious and far-reaching consequences" from the lack of measures in the Budget to support adult social care. The Care and Support Alliance said: "If the Prime Minister’s ambition to ‘fix social care’ is ever to be realised Rishi Sunak has to play his part by providing enough funding to make it happen. He hasn’t done so and therefore, unfortunately, the future of social care remains as uncertain as ever" There are now more than 100,000 care jobs vacant and continuing pressures on care providers, who are struggling to recruit enough staff to keep care facilities open The Care Quality Commission recently warned of a "tsunami of unmet need" in social care, which will in turn heap more pressure on the 13 million unpaid carers who give up so much time and energy to care for their family members, with little recognition or support. There is cross-party consensus that we need far more than the funds announced in the Budget to deal with this crisis in social care. The Health and Social Care Committee recently repeated our call for at least £7 billion a year of extra funding for social care to cover demographic changes, to uplift staff pay in line with the national minimum wage and to protect people who face catastrophic social care costs. What the Government have announced is that additional money from the health and care levy will only fund the cap on catastrophic care costs and some of the consequential costs of that, and the cap only starts to apply from October 2023. Although the Chancellor announced £4.8 billion of extra grant funding for local councils over the next three years, that is not ringfenced for social care, leaving councils to decide how to allocate it across all their cash-strapped services The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said the Budget and spending review were "deeply disappointing". It looked at the £1.6 billion a year extra and said "it will do little more than meet the costs of the rise in the national living wage for care workers from next April." The Local Government Association told the Select Committee recently that the funding gap for adult social care was £6.1 billion and that this underfunding puts the workforce and unpaid family carers under further strain, creating unmet and under-met need. For years, all we have had are sticking plasters from the Government in response to this ever-worsening crisis in social care, rather than recognition of how serious the underfunding issues are. The Budget missed an opportunity to do something about the crisis. The impact of that failure will be serious and far-reaching in social care. We have just heard my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) raising that issue, and there will be more of us standing up here, week in, week out, describing the situation she has described in her local council areas. It will be all of us We need immediate investment to ensure that care staff are paid a proper wage that will compete with better rates paid in retail and hospitality. What are we doing when people can be paid more for flipping burgers than for looking after an elderly person, perhaps with dementia? We need investment so that unpaid carers get the breaks and support they need after 18 months that have very much broken them, and we need investment to address that tsunami of unmet need. It is shameful that we have not paid, as other countries have, a bonus for health and care staff. Indeed, the Minister for Care and Mental Health recently said, when asked about vacancy issues, that they can work millions more hours, just as they did during the pandemic I have outlined the failure of the Government to put the needed investment into social care, but the final point I want to make is about the failure of the Chancellor to reverse his £1,000 cut to universal credit, which will do so much damage this winter. Three quarters of families on universal credit lose more from the £20 cut than they gain from the Budget changes. The Resolution Foundation points out that the poorest fifth of households will still be an average of £280 a year worse off overall. One constituent told me that they, like many others, had been hopeful that the cut would be reversed in the Budget. They are now fearful that throughout this winter they will have to keep choosing between heating their home and eating. They have lost £80 a month due to the cut, but their energy prices have already risen by £95 a month. It was a callous and cruel cut to make in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and a shameful aspect of the Budget.