The Care Bill already seems like a wasted opportunity. I worked for four months, alongside right hon. and hon. Members of this House and Members of the other place, on the Joint Committee that scrutinised the draft Care and Support Bill, and I pay tribute to its members for their work. We now have a Bill that contains some measures that are welcome but others that are seriously flawed.
I will talk first about the burdens the Bill places on local authorities and argue that they must be resourced by the Government. Some people—Ministers or Government Members whose southern local authorities are not being cut in the same way that ours are, for instance—might think that perhaps times are okay, but there could not be a worse time to place extra financial burdens on local authorities. Indeed, the situation for my local authority, Salford city council, will be even bleaker in 2016, the planned date for implementation of the Bill’s reforms. As I said earlier, Salford has already lost £100 million in funding since 2010, and it knows that it will lose another £75 million by 2016. I hope that the Minister is listening—he does not seem to be—because funding for adult social care in Salford has fallen by 20%, from £67 million in 2010 to £53 million this year.