Home Help Service (Hansard, 12 May 1976)

§ 2. Mr. Teddy Taylor
asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the home help service.

§ The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Frank McElhone)
The rate support grant settlement for 1976–77 allowed for a 3 per cent. increase in expenditure on social work services. This is sufficient to maintain existing services, including the home help service, but decisions on levels of services are for local authorities themselves in the light of their assessments of needs and priorities.

§ Mr. Taylor
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in many local authority areas the numbers of home helps are being reduced because of a policy of no additional recruitment? Is he not ashamed to be a member of a Government who are spending £4,000 million on nationalisation but who are responsible for a reduction in essential services for the elderly? Will he at least be prepared to initiate an inquiry into what is happening in the Strathclyde Region, where elderly and disabled people are not getting the home helps they need?

§ Mr. McElhone
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has got it slightly wrong again. The House will know that he and I represent Glasgow seats. Since the hon. Gentleman tabled his Question I have made some checks with my officials on local authority home help services in Glasgow. The fact is that the great majority of clients are getting a home help on five or more days a week. In addition, in the Glasgow district there has been an increase in the number of clients receiving the service despite a reduction in the number of home helps. Our information suggests that the service is being more effectively deployed.

§ Mr. Robert Hughes
Is not my hon. Friend getting somewhat fed up with the sickening hypocrisy of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor), who comes to the Dispatch Box with synthetic compassion for whichever interest group he has a Question about on any particular day, yet who is constantly demanding, like his leader, even more drastic cuts in public expenditure?

§ Mr. McElhone
I am already on record as saying that the Conservative Party in Scotland is the falling dinosaur of the Scottish political world. It must come clean with the electorate. It cannot continually ask for cuts in public expenditure in the House and at the same time betray a social conscience for cheap electoral gains.

§ Mr. Monro
In terms of expenditure on social work and the health services, how can the Minister give up the income from pay beds yet deny home helps to elderly geriatrics?

§ Mr. McElhone
Surely that is the weakest case so far for increasing home help provision.

§ Mrs. Bain
Does the hon. Gentleman realise that many district nurses are deeply concerned that the home help service is not adequate? Does he accept that they are having to take over the service's function? Is he entirely satisfied with the situation in Strathclyde?

§ Mr. McElhone
No one denies—I have never denied this myself—that there are constraints on public expenditure. However, in the Glasgow district, an area which we have checked because it is represented in part by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor), there is a better service because of rationalisation. I adopt the same attitude towards the SNP as I adopt towards the Conservative Party in Scotland as the SNP does not have a social services policy. At the same time as it is thinking of creating an army of 80,000, perhaps in its policy statements it might think of setting out a policy for better social services.

§ Mr. Teddy Taylor
In view of the totally unsatisfactory and complacent nature of the Minister's reply, I beg to ask leave to give notice that I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment.