Stuart Anderson MP is calling for fairer funding for social care in rural areas like South Shropshire. Stuart made the intervention as part of a debate in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 5th November 2024. The debate focused on key measures announced in the Autumn Budget, which was delivered by the Chancellor on Wednesday, 30th October. Helen Morgan the MP for North Shropshire and a Lib Dem spokesperson replied.
Clip from Parliament TV
Clip from Parliament TV
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00:00I've sat on the same meetings as you as a South Shropshire MP and you're North Shropshire
00:10and the impact that we have in Shropshire on social care is about 80% of the council
00:18funding goes towards that. Do you believe that we need a fairer system? Does the honourable
00:24Member believe we need a fairer system to support funding for social care in Shropshire?
00:31Well I thank you for his intervention and I think that fair funding for rural authorities
00:37and indeed all local authorities is a point that I've made many times in this House and
00:41I absolutely agree with him on that. So we saw in the budget £600 million allocated
00:46to social care and an increase in the national living wage and both of those things are obviously
00:51welcome but the huge pressure on private providers from the NIC increase is going to
00:58be really problematic unless councils are funded to pay for those additional costs and
01:02it's not clear to me that the funding announced in the budget will really touch the sides
01:07of the crisis in local government funding and the crisis in social care. Now we all
01:12know that this is a thorny problem, that funding social care is extremely expensive and it's
01:17difficult and that's why cross-party talks are so urgent and so I urge the Secretary
01:21of State to instigate those as soon as possible so that we can work towards a permanent fix
01:26for social care. Liberal Democrats believe free personal care on the Scotland model would
01:31be the best way of achieving that and the Institute for Public Policy Research says
01:36that we could save £3.3 billion by 2031 by implementing that and I think that would be
01:42a good investment because it would save taxpayer money and it would keep people in their homes
01:47with dignity where they wanted to be.