House of Commons Hansard Debates for 27 Jun 1990

Mr. Clarke : Perhaps I should return to why I do not like any specific grants of the kind that have been described for all the new responsibilities and care in the community.

Sir Michael McNair-Wilson (Newbury) : Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

Mr. Clarke : I shall give way once more and then I must deal with the general case.

Sir Michael McNair-Wilson : Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the danger with ring fencing is that it can become restrictive and therefore deny essential flexibility?

Mr. Clarke : I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I am sure that that is the case. The people in another place who supported amendment on ring fencing--quite a number of my hon. Friends and some Opposition members are urging it now--believe that it would be a useful mechanism to put a lever on the Government to put up the amount of money that we spend. That is good in a good year. However, it would give the Government every opportunity again to identify to other parts of the local government system the restraints that they want to impose on the growth of care in the community in future years. I am not sure that the short-term reasons that attract people to that arrangement

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at the moment are likely to be good and lasting for all time. It is a double-edged sword which some directors of social services are asking us to wield in their budgets.

My starting point is what the policy is. We are clearly giving local authorities responsibility for policy, and they should expect to be accountable for it. Responsibility involves a range of activities, such as assessing individual clients, and arranging for care. As in all social policy, that involves a local authority taking on board the choice of priorities, deciding what can be afforded for certain clients and the emphasis that it wants to give, and deciding what priority to give to that part of its policies as against other parts of its social services provision. Those in responsibility cannot make judgments about finance in different parts--

Mr. Nicholas Winterton : Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

Mr. Clarke : I shall give way later, because if I am not careful I shall make a long speech.

Those in local government are accountable to their electorate for all local government services. It is artificial to extract accountability for part of its services.

It is a mistake for the House and the Government to believe that somehow we can transfer responsibility to local government but retain the ability to make key judgments about what proportion of the social services budget should be spent on community care. All the history of central Government trying to do that with local government shows that it is unworkable.

The Association of County Councils is against ring fencing. Many people in local government remember when far more local government money came from specific grants on which Parliament and Government insisted. They felt hog- tied in their choice of priorities. Following that path would sit curiously with the other provision that we give local government. A case for ring fencing could be made for every aspect of local government policy. The Department of Health steered the Children Bill through the House last year. Hon. Members who served on the Standing Committee and those who took part in debates in the other place were enthusiastic about raising the standard of local authority care for children. In the light of what has happened this year, I am convinced that, if they had thought of ring fencing, all those enthusiasts, including Conservative Back Benchers, would have tabled an amendment to ring-fence the money for local authority provision under the Children Act 1989, which will become a new obligation on local authorities in October next year. Some hon. Members take part in education debates. The House would be full of enthusiasts for ring fencing education grants. In recent years, there has been a growth in specific grants for education, which, by and large, are resented by education authorities, although the small grants tend to be fairly desirable. We cannot return to a system whereby, when the House is dealing with a new subject, we suddenly invent a new separate and specific grant for a part of local authorities's responsibilities.

Mr. Hind : Many Conservative Members are concerned that my right hon. and learned Friend should answer the criticism that was made by the directors of social services in their response to the Griffiths report, in which they bluntly said that they were concerned that certain local

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authorities would spend the community care budget on filling holes in the road. That is what started the ring-fencing argument.

Mr. Clarke : I accept what my hon. Friend says. Many of the people who are arguing for ring fencing believe that. I have given the general case against it, which is why we should not go down this route as a response to those fears.

I do not believe that those fears are real. Every director of a local government service would like his budget to be protected while he retains the ability to raid other people's. The person in charge of transport would love to have his budget ring-fenced and to be a predator on other budgets, and the same applies to directors of education and social services. Since we have made block grants to local government, it has been much more free to choose between one service and another. All the experience shows that social services do not lose under block grants. Year in and year out, the expenditure of most local authorities on social services tends to exceed that set down as the norm by Government under the grant-related expenditure assessment or the standard spending assessment and the money comes from other services such as transport, which is a frequent loser. There is nothing to suggest that social services have suffered predation by local authorities for the sake of other calls on their budget.

Mr. Jack Ashley (Stoke-on-Trent, South) rose --

9.15 pm

Mr. Nicholas Winterton : I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend is aware that the block grant was introduced by our right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) and our hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Sir E. Griffiths) under a previous Conservative Government and that there is considerable support, even on the Government side, for the reintroduction of a specific grant, not least from our hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the Government are handing over to local government considerable responsibility for vulnerable groups? Will he share with the House his concern that if local government were capped even more than in this financial year, as it could well be, those vulnerable groups who cannot represent themselves--the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped, the elderly and the disabled--could be disadvantaged because money allocated in the standard spending assessment by the Government for community care may not all be spent on community care, but may be spent on more desirable, romantic sectors of local government expenditure?

Mr. Clarke : Obviously, my first answer is the one that I have just given. Experience of local government tends to show strongly that social services do not lose out to other services. It tends to be the other way round, because most local authorities of whatever political complexion tend to share my hon. Friend's concern for these groups. Local authorities tend to protect spending on those groups rather than on other parts of the budget, such as holes in the road, which in past periods of local government restraint have obviously not rated highly in the priorities.

I shall return to my hon. Friend's argument having dealt with my final practical point. I am still unclear about how the advocates of ring fencing think that they would

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ring-fence an identifiable block of work. Local government already has care in the community responsibilities. All our social services authorities provide home helps, meals on wheels, respite care and many other services to people in the community. A new responsibility is now being added.

There would be appalling problems in trying to define exactly the subject matter of the community care block grant. In particular, one would have to decide where to put the line between this and the rest of the social services budget. There are endless practical cases where a particular client, to use the social worker word, is not in the category labelled "care in the community client" rather than "other social services client". The work is blurred at the edges, so definition would be difficult.

The amendment leaves to the Secretary of State and his Department the other simple task of deciding on a formula to distribute the money, and so on. The amendment has practical problems.

My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) and many other right hon. and hon. Members are worried that without ring fencing we could leave vulnerable groups open to possible losses in their budget which we might otherwise avoid. Obviously, we depend mainly on the policy, which is an improvement. The new funds that will be given will pave the way to an expansion of service. Furthermore, other controls are built into the Bill which will enable us to monitor the provision of care.

All local authorities will be required to produce community care plans. They will be required to consult on them with health authorities and others. Therefore, we shall have more opportunity to feed in news about the quality and nature of local authority provision than now. Part of the new policy includes enhanced powers for the social services inspectorate. Therefore, other areas of what I would call, perhaps unsuitably, quality control are being built into the Bill. Inept use of local government grant powers will not be the effective way to look after the standards of provision. If hon. Members want to return to the old system of distributing money to local government whereby it was given set sums for each task, they should vote for the amendment. The Association of County Councils is against the amendment, and I believe that most of the other local government associations would not be in favour of returning to the old method of giving out money on a

service-by-service provision. I believe that we are right not to want to return to the old system. The block grant is an improvement, particularly for matters which are a local government responsibility. For such matters, local government must decide its priorities.

Dame Jill Knight : My right hon. and learned Friend referred to the Children Act 1989. In the light of the Stephanie Fox case which occurred only a week or so ago, does he believe that the money allocated by the House to protect children under the provisions of that Act was sufficient and was used to protect that child? It was the intention of the House that the money should be used in that way.

Mr. Clarke : I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not refer to the Stephanie Fox case in detail. My hon. Friend the Minister for Health answered a parliamentary question about that case recently. I do not believe that resources were the key issue in that case, but

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I should prefer to give a more considered response if the matter is raised in a more structured way on another occasion. I will give way to the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) if he still wants me to.

Mr. Ashley : I thought that the Secretary of State was avoiding me. The Secretary of State argues that if we press for ring fencing for community care, we should logically extend it to education, children and other needs. Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman consider the possibility--I believe that it is a certainty--that those receiving community care are not popular in the sense of receiving a popular allocation? They are not politically popular. As the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) said, severely disabled people, and especially mentally disabled people, are not popular. That is why money for them should be ring-fenced. We would not press for general ring fencing.

Mr. Clarke : I hope that I can meet the right hon. Gentleman's point. Some of the people about whom we are talking are, to use his phrase, politically popular. The elderly are popular, as are the disabled who are a powerful lobby, in which the right hon. Gentleman takes an active part. I agree that some local authorities are less inclined to give the correct priority to mentally ill people. I also believe that local authorities are inclined to cut grants to voluntary bodies when they are under budgetary pressures. Drug and alcohol abuse are not always popular recipients of social services money.

The case is made for specific grants, in education, social services and elsewhere on a smaller scale than the amendment contemplates. I am in favour of small specific grants, where we give a block of money to local government to induce it to provide a service which, if it were left to itself, it would be inclined not to provide. From the word go, we have always had a proposal for specific grant for community care services and for mentally ill people.

Some local authorities have a bad record of community care provision for mentally ill people. Some hardly bother with it at all. For that reason, we are introducing a new and particular form of specific grant. The money will be handled on our behalf by the district health authorities which will disburse the money to local authorities as they produce plans which fit in with the health authorities' plans for the discharge of patients from hospitals or the care of patients in the community.

In response to the Lords amendment and to the pressure from all sides on ring fencing, with which I have dealt, we have looked again at the position of people who are dependent on drugs and alcohol and at the work of the voluntary bodies that deal with drug and alcohol abuse. Among others, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) referred in Committee to the fear felt by the voluntary organisations about the arrangements that we were proposing for the financing of care in the community. That concern was also raised in another place. Voluntary organisations have expanded their work in recent years, largely on the basis of the current availability of income support at the registered home rates. That is one of the things that we are doing away with. Under the new policy, there will be no access to such income support.

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We have all encountered people who work with those with drug and alcohol abuse problems who say that they fear the loss of income support money because they are dependent on the local authorities which might not give them the necessary grants. That is why our amendment proposes that the Secretary of State should be able to make specific grants to local authorities for use in helping voluntary organisations with the services that they provide for people who are dependent on drugs or alcohol. Our amendment refers to

"persons who are, have been, or are likely to become dependent upon alcohol or drugs".

The provisions would enable local authorities to assist with the preventive work that is undertaken by the voluntary organisations, as well as to assist them with the services that they provide for those who are dependent on drugs or alcohol or who are recovering from such dependency.

I hope that, having heard me answer the general case, the House will accept that we have responded to an important point that has been worried away at ever since the Bill was introduced. People have named the voluntary bodies which could envisage the loss of their income support funding and which were dubious about whether their local social services departments would want to continue giving them a grant for their work with, for example, drug abusers. Indeed, as the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South said, some local authorities might be tempted to give a pretty low priority to the work of outside agencies for unattractive groups, such as drug abusers.

Therefore, I say to the House--if I was in another place, I should say it to their Lordships--that I hope that those who have worried at that issue will accept that they have won a significant point. Alongside the commitment that we have already given to make specific grants for the services for mentally ill people, we are now putting on the face of the Bill, in primary legislation, a specific provision for grants to voluntary organisations, which the Government will fund. The Government will be accountable for the sum of money that is allocated for that purpose. To use the jargon, that money will be ring-fenced and local authorities will be able to spend it only on grants to such bodies.

Mr. Hinchliffe : The Secretary of State seems to have undermined his central argument against the Lords amendment by making a concession on that point--although I welcome the fact that he has. Like many people outside the House, I am puzzled by why the right hon. and learned Gentleman has conceded on the issue of specific grants for mental illness, but not for mental handicap. I cannot see any logical difference between the two.

Mr. Clarke : I was always in favour of specific grants for mental illness services. I was a strong advocate from the word go, and such provision was always in the policy. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the current provision made by the local authorities, he will find that only 3 per cent. of the total budget is spent on services for mentally ill people. The proportion varies from authority to authority. In some authorities the provision is minuscule. The provision for services for the mentally ill had therefore been given too low a priority.

There is also the problem of liaison with the health authorities themselves. I believe that most hon. Members support modern mental illness policies and accept that

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there should be smaller institutions and care in the community. However, most of us also accept that that works badly in practice. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield is alway pressing me about people who slip through the net and he sometimes attacks the policy. However, he is right to say that we know that, however good that policy may be in theory, it does not work well in practice in the country at large. That is why there is a wholly separate case for a specific grant for mental illness provision.

My proposition is based on the view that where it is reasonable to suppose that certain groups might be unpopular, a small amount of the local government allocation can be ring-fenced in specific grants. That is the way in which we shall induce authorities to spend more than they otherwise would on that part of the provision. It is taking that much too far--I do not think that I have undermined the basic case--to say that a huge block of money, being a high proportion of the money available for care in the community activities, should be ring-fenced and specific grant-based in that way. There is no evidence to suggest that social services have come under pressure from other services under the comparative argument for resources. There is no really sensible way of separating the money with clear borders, from the rest of social services provision.

Going for specific grants of that kind would be to go back on every development in local government finance in recent years. Some aspects of the relationship between central Government and local government finance are an improvement on some years ago. To stay with the basic objective of a block grant, leaving local authorities to choose priorities among their overall responsibilities, remains sound. 9.30 pm

Mr. Nicholas Bennett (Pembroke) : I spent eight years as a local authority member, and served on social services committees for six of them. In the whole of that time, the debate was about more freedom for local authorities to decide their own priorities and how money was to be spent. We welcomed the abolition of specific grants for a whole range of local authority services. It is peculiar to hear people arguing to go the other way and to suggest as do some in local authorities, that they cannot trust themselves? Does not my right hon. and learned Friend find that strange, and does he have more faith in local authority members than do some right hon. and hon. Members?

Mr. Clarke : My hon. Friend makes a persuasive point and is correct in saying that the balance of local government opinion in recent years is that the way things have gone is to be welcomed by all political parties.

I have a letter from Mr. Robin Wendt, secretary of the Association of County Councils, who says :

"This is to confirm that the ACC would not support a system of specific government grant towards the general revenue costs of community care, and would endorse the line taken by the Secretary of State in the House of Commons earier this week."

It would be putting the clock back to return to the concept of central Government earmarking funds for particular purposes.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton : What about capping?

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Mr. Clarke : I hear arguments about capping, but there is agreement in the House on our policy of care in the community. There is a clear undertaking that when it is introduced, adequate funds will be made available. There is no problem about that. We are immersed in the details of local government finance, and as Secretary of State for Health, I will go as far as I need into local government finance and no further for the purpose of this debate. I am sure that you, Mr. Speaker, would rule me out of order if I embarked on a general debate on local government finance.

Capping is imposed not on councils that are in difficulty providing essential services but on those that have so mismanaged their affairs that they are incapable of delivering a decent service within the amount of expenditure incurred by reasonable councils elsewhere, and without prejudice to cases that may be proceeding before the courts at the present time.

Within the right level of resources, every local authority has the responsibility and duty to distribute its own resources, allocating them to the headings it thinks best. It should be accountable to its own electors for the standard of care that it then produces.

Mr. Rowe : The amendment in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) is important. The Bill engendered considerable excitement because its intention appeared to be to give power to the consumer to an extent that has hitherto not been forthcoming. We have a long way to go before the consumer becomes sovereign in this difficult field, but there is no doubt that that is the intention of the Bill, and we welcomed it on that basis. Having been given an assurance in Committee that consumers who had been given a right or an opportunity to manage part of their own budget in a way which enables them to purchase and control the purchase of services, and who have done that with tremendous skill and to their own great satisfaction as it restored to them a degree of independence, it was a shock to discover Ministers appearing to resile from that assurance. Apparently, local authorities providing mostly severely disabled people with a part of their care budget for them to control might be in danger of being ruled illegal for doing so. The disabled and others who have had the ability to control part of that budget should be able to continue to do so.

I received a letter from the Spinal Injuries Association which is typical of the concern that has been expressed. It states : "Government Ministers have on many occasions given their support to the many schemes already run by local authorities. A number of our members benefit from these schemes and they all work most successfully. The ability to arrange their own personal care assistance gives them independence, choice and control over their lives which would otherwise be unattainable due to the severity of their disability."

That is what community care is about and exactly what we should aim to achieve. I want to secure a categoric assurance from my right hon. and learned Friend that the existing schemes and future schemes that could be made to work will not be put at risk.

The case against such schemes is the difficulty in defining those cases in which such expenditure authority should be given to the consumer. It is said that we could end up with all sorts of people asking for cash in hand. How would we know that they would not spend that on

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drink? We have heard that argument and all the others ad nauseum since the 19th century. Such arguments are demeaning to the tiny handful of people for whom the schemes have operated and the limited number for whom they are likely to operate.

People who want to manage their care in such a way will attempt to do so in a meticulous manner. If they are put under normal accounting procedures and are expected to account, monthly or quarterly, for how they spend the money, I cannot believe that there is any danger of the money being wrongly applied. I cannot imagine that people would damage their own care programme by pursuing such procedures badly. I hope that Ministers will give us an assurance about this issue. I am one of those hon. Members who feel strongly that ring fencing would be a serious mistake. I have experienced a major reorganisation of services--I took part in the reorganisation of social work in Scotland--and I know that, once one reorganises a major service, the professionals begin to defend their frontiers. They put their tanks on the lawn. If ring fencing is provided for one group of professionals, all the others who may still retain a desire to co-operate closely with those professionals will feel less inclined to do so, because they will feel that those professionals have secured their money.

Mr. Favell : Does my hon. Friend agree that the councils involved with social services are more important than the professionals? The directors of social services departments are concerned about having to argue their case with their fellow councillors and directors on local authorities. They believe that the Government would be easier meat. That is what this is all about.

Mr. Rowe : I am not sure whether that is exactly so. My right hon. and learned Friend has already said that the record on social services has shown that in most part of the country social services departments have held their own well against other claimants on local authority budgets.

If community care is to work properly, we have to ensure that the consumers of community care are provided with satisfactory housing and receive education which allows them to live in the community. They have to be sure that they can maintain the in-and-out relationship with the health service that many of them require. If we ring-fence too firmly the budget for community care, we shall put up shutters between professions and make the increasingly promising co-operation between the various services much harder to achieve.

Mr. Robin Cook : I begin by welcoming the Secretary of State's amendment. He will recall that there was some debate on the matter in Committee and that both sides of the Committee supported making particular provision for those who had been involved in drug or alcohol abuse. We are glad that, even at this late stage, the Secretary of State has been able to respond to that anxiety. However, the amendment makes it all the more confusing that the Secretary of State believes that there is an issue of principle in resisting the idea of ring fencing. Whether or not we disagree with the Lords amendment tonight, when the Bill leaves this place it will contain two specific pieces of ring fencing--grants for those who are mentally ill and grants for those involved in drug or alcohol abuse. What is at

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issue in this debate is extending the same protection of ring fencing to other client groups of community care such as the elderly, the mentally handicapped and the disabled.

The Secretary of State asked what is different about that part of local authority expenditure which would justify departing from general grants and providing specific ring-fenced grants. I can answer that question. As the Secretary of State explained to the House, the concept behind this part of the Bill is the transfer of resources from the Department of Social Security, which currently supports elderly, mentally handicapped or disabled people who live in residential care, to the local authorities which will have the responsibility for meeting the bills for those client groups. The House should contemplate ring-fencing those grants as without ring-fencing there is no guarantee that the resources transferred from the DSS to local authorities will be spent on those client groups. Without ring -fencing, the money could be spent on education, highways or industrial development--all splendid, excellent purposes in themselves, but not the functions for which the resources will be transferred. Without ring- fencing, the real danger is that the paradox of the Bill will be that instead of promoting community care we shall diminish the expenditure of the DSS without producing a corresponding increase in local authority spending.

At the beginning of his speech, the Secretary of State said that resistance to the Government's position and support for ring-fencing was partly based on the obscurity of the issue. This is a bipartisan debate, so let me counsel the Secretary of State in a friendly spirit-- [Laughter.] Perhaps he should wait until I have finished before he gets too excited. If I may counsel the Secretary of State as a friend, one of his less attractive features is to lecture those who disagree with him on the basis that they do not know what they are talking about. However, the Secretary of State stands absolutely alone among informed opinion on this issue.

Sir Roy Griffiths certainly knew what he was talking about, and he stands by his original proposal for ring-fencing. At the outset of its report, the Select Committee quotes Sir Roy Griffiths : "I have provided a purposeful, effective and economic four-wheeled vehicle, but the White Paper has redesigned it as a three-wheeler, leaving out the fourth wheel of ring- fenced funding."

There is no suggestion that Sir Roy Griffiths regarded ring-fencing as just another tree in the wood--to use the Secretary of State's analogy. Ring fencing was essential to the balance of Sir Roy Griffiths' package.

All the voluntary organisations that are concerned with the client groups want ring fencing. When preparing for this debate I received representations from the Spastics Society, Age Concern, the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, MENCAP, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, the Carers National Association and RADAR--the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation--which specifically asked me to say :

"RADAR will be deeply disappointed if the Government rejects the Lords amendment on ring fencing."

9.45 pm

Mr. Michael Jack (Fylde) : Which local authorities have written to the hon. Gentleman about this? Has he personally received a representation from the Association of County Councils on this issue? Will he place on record

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which Labour-controlled local authorities would not carry out their responsibilities for community care along the lines that he suggests?

Mr. Cook : I can happily answer the hon. Gentleman's first question about which local authorities have written to me on the issue--88. I have carried out a survey of local authorities.

Mr. Jack : There are 400.

Mr. Cook : There are not 400 social services authorities, if I may correct the hon. Gentleman. I hope that I can do so without falling into the Secretary of State's error of saying that he does not know what he is talking about. There are only 116 social services authorities, and 88 is a good response rate.

In an earlier speech during the debate on the guillotine motion, the Minister for Health unfairly chided the hon. Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) for lacking confidence in local authorities.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : I have no confidence in Lancashire.

Mr. Cook : I had hoped to assist the hon. Lady and I am terribly sorry if I have succeeded in causing offence. I think that the hon. Lady served on a local authority at one time, but not in Lancaster. Those of us who listen to what local authorities are saying about ring fencing do not lecture local authorities on what we think is in their good, but show greater confidence in them. I can give the hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) the precise breakdown he seeks. Of the 88 local authority directors of social services who responded to me, 84--[ Hon. Members :-- "That is different."] The directors of social services certainly know what they are talking about and cannot be accused, as the Secretary of State accused his critics, of being involved in obscuring the issue and failing to understand what is at stake. They are the very people who will have to administer care in the community. I deprecate the way in which some Conservative Members jeered at the mention of the directors.

Of the directors of social services, 84 supported ring fencing and many said that it was essential. Only two local authority directors of social services were against ring fencing. Both of them came from Labour councils, one of which is so popular with the Government that it has just been poll tax-capped.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : I have no quarrel with the Ministe, because I have no confidence in Lancashire local authority to spend the money on social services. It will blue it on anything it likes. My hon. Friend the Minister obviously has more confidence in the Lancashire authority than I have, but she does not live there ; I do.

Mr. Cook : A sound rule that I am sure all hon. Members follow when canvassing is that, when promised a vote, one does not inquire too closely into the motivation for it. I have possibly gone too far against that rule on this occasion.

Mr. Hind : The hon. Gentleman made a good point when he took up my hon. Friends' comment on the social services directors. I take on board what the directors said, but what do the local authorities and the elected representatives think? I appreciate that the hon.

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Gentleman has gone to the experts, but what do the people whom they serve think? That is an entirely different matter.

Mr. Cook : The hon. Gentleman is right that there is a distinction here, but it is not as great as he suggests. Many of those directors made it clear that they spoke on behalf of their committee and their local authority. I am not aware of a single director who made representations to me which are in conflict with the position of his local authority and I should be surprised if there was one.

Mr. Hind : What about the Association of County Councils?

Mr. Cook : The ACC is out of step, but all the other official organisations of local authorities are in favour of ring fencing.

Mrs. Audrey Wise (Preston) : Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Cook : I will give way to my hon. Friend, but this must be the last occasion.

Mrs. Wise : The Select Committee report says that the Association of County Councils stated :

"The Association's view is that the major element of Government financial support to local government should be by means of a general grant mechanism. The Association also accepts that there is a role for specific grants in certain circumstances. One such clear role would be to recognise the additional costs of preparing for implementing the proposals in the White Paper Community Care resources must be actually available to individual social services authorities. This implies the separate identification of resources for individual authorities".

Therefore, the ACC is not really out of step. It is asking for specific identification.

Mr. Cook : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for clarifying so clearly the ACC's position, although I did not expect that she would emerge as its spokesman.

The Secretary of State referred to the increase in social services expenditure during the past 10 years. That point was also made by the Minister for Health in the earlier debate. Both quoted a 37 per cent. increase in social services authorities' expenditure.

During the past few years, there has been an increase in social services expenditure. I am bound to tell Ministers on the Front Bench that their colleagues in Whitehall complain all the time about that increase in local authority expenditure. If local authority expenditure continues to increase, they will find themselves being capped, as 19 social services authorities have been capped by the Government. Other people along that ministerial chain in Whitehall have devised the poll tax with the particular objective of making local authority fund-raising as painful as possible, and so making an increase in local authority spending as unlikely as possible. I warn the Secretary of State that if, during the next few years, the poll tax survives and local authority spending on social services increases by 37 per cent., Downing street will certainly regard the poll tax as having failed. Given that new element in local authority finance, severe and savage as it is, it is unlikely that that upward trend in local authorities' social services spending will continue. If the Secretary of State consults the survey of the Association of Directors of Social Services, he will find that even this year

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one third of all social services departments are cutting services because of the financial squeeze caused by the poll tax.

I can forgive the Government for setting aside the views of Labour councils. I can well understand that they must be embarrassed at finding themselves in the company of Derbyshire, stoutly resisting the call for ring fencing, while simultaneously poll tax-capping their allies. But what about the Tory councils? With respect to the hon. Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind), I did not receive a single response from a director of social services from a Conservative-controlled area who was opposed to the principle of ring fencing. Every director in every Conservative-controlled social services authority from which I received a response said that he supported ring fencing. Even the flagships, Wandsworth and Westminster, have mutinied on this issue and stuck to their guns. In case the hon. Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) seeks to intervene to prolong my speech yet again, I must point out that not just the directors but Wandsworth and Westminster social services committees concluded in favour of ring fencing. The chair of Westminster social services committee has been to see the Secretary of State to argue the case-- [Interruption.] I am merely going by the minutes of the Westminster committee, which I very much hope has not been misled on that point.

The reason why all these councils, including the two favourite sons of the Government, favour ring fencing is not, as the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) said in an intervention before absenting himself, that those councils do not trust themselves ; they all, Conservative and Labour, want ring fencing because they do not trust Ministers. In a bipartisan spirit, I must tell the Secretary of State that they are probably wise to distrust Ministers of both political persuasions because, as those councils know, if Governments can get away with burying the resources for community care beneath the mountain of Exchequer grant, no one will be able to see what is going into community care--

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