§ Ms. Harmanasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how the grant-related expenditure allocation figures for personal social services have taken into account the number of elderly people who require extra services under care in the community policies for the mentally-ill and mentally-handicapped.
§ Mr. John PattenThe grant-related expenditure for each authority is a total covering all services; components are not hypothecated to individual services. The totals are set taking into account all the general responsibilities of authorities, including the consequences of increasing community care, but no elements within the total are specifically identified for this spending. Local authority expenditure under the "Care in the Community" arrangements, which is wholly funded by health authorities, does not reckon for grant-related expenditure purposes. Details of the make-up of GRE assessments are set out in "The Technical Handbook of Grant Related Expenditure, 1984–85" (Department of the Environment, April 1984), a copy of which is in the Library.
§ Ms. Harmanasked the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) what is the total level of expenditure in excess of the grant-related expenditure allocations for local authority personal social service departments in England in (a) 1983–84 and (b) 1984–85; and what percentage of total personal social service department expenditure this represents;
(2) what is the statistical link between grant-related expenditure allocation figures for personal social services and the latest expenditure White Paper projections for local authority expenditure.
§ Mr. John PattenThe grant-related expenditure (GRE) for each local authority is determined by my right 595W hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, and relates to the authority's total expenditure on all services. The total is calculated from components relating to services, but these components are not hypothecated to individual services.
The total of the PSS component GREs used in the rate support grant settlements for 1983–84 and 1984–85 are set out, together with the latest estimate of outturn expenditure on personal social services for 1983–84 and local authority budgets for personal social services for 1984–85.
£ million 1983–84 1984–85 (a) Estimated outturn-budgets (approximate: on a comparable basis to GREs) 2,210 2,326 (b) PSS GRE total in RSG Settlement 2,085 2,205 (b) as a percentage of (a) 94 per cent. 95 per cent. There are no GREs for future years. These will be determined in forthcoming RSG settlements for 1985–86 and 1986–87.