HC Deb 03 December 1991 vol 200 cc136-8
9. Mr. Lofthouse

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the provision of local authority social services under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970.

Mrs. Virginia Bottomley

Local authorities provide a range of social services under section 2 of the Act, including assistance in the home, meals, equipment and adaptations, telephones, holidays and recreational facilities.

Mr. Lofthouse

Why are the Government preventing local authorities from providing adequate services for the chronically sick and disabled? Is the Minister aware that if the Wakefield district council social services department had to stick to its standard spending assessment it would have to save a further £3 million this year on services for the chronically sick and disabled? Is she further aware that, like myself, each weekend many hon. Members meet many chronically sick and disabled constituents who are not receiving adequate services to enable them to lead a reasonable and respectable life? What do the Government intend to do about that?

Mrs. Bottomley

I am pleased to be able to report to the hon. Gentleman that we have just had the first results of the monitoring arrangements for the implementation of community care and we are impressed with the practical schemes already being advanced to ensure that the frail and vulnerable, and particularly the chronically sick and disabled, receive the support that they need. The hon. Gentleman will want to know that during the past two years personal social services standard spending will have increased by nearly 33 per cent.—19 per cent. in real terms —which is more than adequate to allow for demography and renewed pressures on local authorities.

Mr. Thurnham

Does my hon. Friend agree that voluntary groups and private providers can efficiently deliver services for the disabled? Will she instruct local authorities not to use all the extra funds for their own union-dominated monopoly services, so beloved by the Opposition?

Mrs. Bottomley

There is little doubt that the work undertaken by the voluntary sector, and often by the independent sector, is of an extremely high quality. It is vital that local authority social services departments do not use the additional resources for a job creation scheme for their own staff. They are required to identify the best way of helping the frail and vulnerable and in many cases that will be by using the voluntary or the independent sector.

Mr. Wigley

Does the Minister accept that those vitally important services that she described depend not only on her own Department, but on the Department of Social Services, on the Department of the Environment in respect of local government, on the Scottish Office and on the Welsh Office? Given the importance of those services from 1993, in the context of care in the community, will the Minister undertake an in-depth review to ensure adequate budgets for those services to ensure that there is no shortfall thereafter?

Mrs. Bottomley

I greatly respect the hon. Gentleman's comments. If the individual is to receive a seamless service, effective co-operation at local level is essential to ensure that the frail and vulnerable receive help from suitable services and health authorities, with the assistance of housing authorities. We in central Government are taking strenuous steps to make sure that we work effectively; similarly, it is vital that local and health authorities, together with general practitioners, make sure that they are ready for April 1993.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman

Does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that while Britain has the highest proportion of health costs funded by the public purse, the British public have shown their confidence in it by the fact that only 13 per cent. of them choose private treatment, compared with 25 per cent. in France, and 28 per cent. in Germany? [Interruption.] Will Opposition Members kindly keep quiet?

Mrs. Bottomley

Once again, my hon. Friend identifies a vital point about public confidence in our national health service, which stems from the Government's investment in and support for it. My hon. Friend need ask only one question. If she or any of her friends become unwell anywhere else in the world, what would they do? They would make their way back home as fast as they could to receive the benefits of national health service treatment.

Mr. Alfred Morris

How many disabled people, after being assessed for services under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1979, are now on waiting lists for the help that they need? At the latest date for which the Minister has figures, how many local authorities had reduced or removed services in cases where there was no diminution of need? How does the Minister react to the case, of which I have informed her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, in which home help provision was withdrawn from an elderly couple, both of whom are severely and progressively disabled?

Mrs. Bottomley

The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that there has been a steady and substantial increase in resources for all kinds of community care—be it day places for the mentally ill or for those with learning disabilities, or increased resources for home help. The right hon. Gentleman identified the way in which some home help services have been moving towards home care services. We are looking at that, but to suggest that there has been other than a clear and steady increase in available services would be a travesty of the truth.