Community Care (Hansard, 24 July 1990)

§ Mr. Galbraith
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he expects to implement the new arrangements for community care; and if he will make a statement.

§ Mr. Lang
I refer to the reply given by my right hon. and learned Friend to my hon. Friend the Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) on 18 July 1990.

§ Mr. Nigel Griffiths
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will estimate the cost in staff time and resources within the Scottish Office of working to prepare for the implementation of the community care reforms.

§ Mr. Lang
Some 25 officials within the Scottish Office have devoted a significant proportion of their working time within the past eight months to preparations for the implementation of the arrangements announced in the White Paper published in November 1989. This work has included preparing advice for Ministers on the content of legislation and other matters, drafting guidance documents for consultation purposes and taking forward discussions with local authority and voluntary sector interests. All this work would have been necessary regardless of the particular timetable chosen for implementing the proposals. The amount of time expended by individual officials has varied considerably and accurate calculations of the total cost could not be produced without disproportionate expenditure.

§ Mr. Nigel Griffiths
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland exactly how much extra funding Scottish local authorities have been calculated to require to implement the community care reforms; whether this can be broken down into region-by-region figures for Scotland; and what are the calculations of need and precise method used to arrive at these figures.

§ Mr. Lang
The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities provided estimates of the additional costs involved for Scottish local authorities in total in implementing the proposals in the White Paper "Caring for People". Officials of my Department have discussed these with representatives of the convention and further discussions will take place in the light of the phased implementation plan.
My right hon. and learned Friend will have regard to the financial implications of community care in announcing the local authority settlement later this week.