While expectations were already low for this year’s autumn statement, the conventional wisdom was that the chancellor would have at least have to do something for social care. After all, the government’s own regulator of care services, the Care Quality Commission, had warned in October that the system was at a ‘tipping point’ and made a formal request to ministers for more funding for these services. Earlier this month, the Local Government Association and Conservative council leaders had made the same point, so it seemed odds on the chancellor would do something like raising the level of the social care precept local authorities can put on council tax. It would not have been new money from central government but at least it would have been something.
Instead he announced no additional funding and did not even mention social care or the health service once. This now leaves social care and especially residential care homes teetering on a cliff-edge. There has been no additional funding to cope with rising demand, cuts to local authority budgets and the next round of increases in the minimum wage. A social care system starved of funds will only end up putting yet more pressure on the National Health Service at a time where an unprecedented number of trusts find themselves in deficit and having to enter financial special measures. The chief executive of Care England, Martin Green, summed the situation up clearly when he said ‘The lack of investment in social care spells disaster in the NHS and potentially a perpetual winter’ while the Conservative chair of the LGA Lord Porter warned that local authorities face a £5.8bn funding gap by 2020 and that it was ‘unacceptable’ this was not addressed in the autumn statement.
If the message about social care is so ominous, then it is in keeping with the rest of the news from the chancellor’s statement with debt forecast to rise to eye watering levels and growth rates and weekly earnings revised downwards. Year after year we were lectured by the Tories about ‘fixing the roof while the sun is shining’ but now we can see the results of George Osborne’s policies for what they were. Every penny in welfare savings were spent on tax cuts which mostly went to higher earners. Now the economic shock of Brexit is striking there is no room but to borrow, pushing our debt to GDP ratio to 92 per cent. So whereas many of challenges our economy faces are a result of Brexit, itself a result of the Tory leadership putting party before country, we are in a situation today where finances are so tight directly as a result of poor spending decisions since 2010 – so let there be no doubt as to where the source of this looming crisis lies.
So what happens next? I fear further care home closures which will only put more pressure on our overstretched hospitals. Other homes may end up withdrawing from state provision altogether and simply take in private self-funders in order to stay afloat. The sector will continue to do its best but government inaction leaves the system on the brink of a major collapse.
The chancellor must take action in March and give the sector the additional funds it needs, including bringing forward money via the Better Care Fund previously earmarked towards the end of this parliament. Without that, I fear we risk the collapse of the social care system as we know it and what does that say about us as a country if we are unable to provide dignity and care to people in their final years?
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Peter Kyle is member of parliament for Hove and Portslade. He tweets @PeterKyle
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