I beg to move,
That this House notes that eight years of Government cuts to council budges have resulted in a social care funding crisis; further notes that 1.4 million older people have unmet social care needs; notes that Government grant funding for local services is set to be cut by a further £1.3 billion in 2019-20, further exacerbating the crisis; recognises with concern the increasing funding gap for social care; further recognises that proposals from the Government to invest £240 million will not close that gap; and calls on the Government to close the funding gap for social care this year and for the rest of the Parliament.
In October 2016, the Prime Minister told this House that her Government would provide a long-term sustainable system for social care that gives people reassurance. Then the Conservative manifesto said:
“Where others have failed to lead, we will act.”
But the Government have failed utterly to act and people in need of care have paid the price of that inaction. It is approaching a year since the Government promised they would deliver a Green Paper, yet it is still nowhere to be seen months after the planned publication date originally scheduled for summer. Since then, we have seen a further £1 billion cut from social care because of the cuts the Government have made to the budgets of the councils that deliver it, with disastrous consequences for the social care system.
The Prime Minister has not heeded her own warnings about failing to act. During last year’s election campaign, she said that
“the social care system will collapse unless we do something about it. We could try and pretend the problem isn’t there and hope it will go away, but it won’t. It will grow each year.”
That is exactly what has happened. The problem has not gone away and it has grown in the past year.