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Mr. Burns: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Pike: No, I will not give way to the Minister again.
Mr. Burns: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I appreciate that he is floundering, and I do not want to
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cause him undue embarrassment, but will he be kind enough to explain why there was an underspend in those two years if resources were so tight?
Mr. Pike: The underspend was 1.78 per cent. I accept that no one wants an underspend--
Mr. Burns: Why was there one, then?
Mr. Pike: There are many reasons. The social services position is changing all the time.
Mr. Pike: What the Minister says is entirely unjustified. In the previous year, there was a £230,000 overspend. Is the Minister saying that that was wrong? Is he saying that the spending of every Government Department is exactly on target each year? We have been looking at the Chancellor's figures for this year. There has been great variation in the public sector borrowing requirement, for instance.
Mr. Elletson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Pike: No, I will not. The hon. Gentleman was not even present at the beginning of the debate--he came in late--and other hon. Members want to speak.
The charges are low compared with those of many other local authorities, with 56 per cent. of service users paying only the minimum rate of £1.55 per week. If the county council had not introduced charges, it would have had to make more cuts. The Minister may feel that the council has sufficient overall resources. That is not true. It needs more financial resources and a greater continuity of budget.
Mr. Den Dover (Chorley):
It gives me great pleasure to reinforce the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Hawkins) because, in the 17 years that I have represented Chorley, Lancashire county council's social services department has been very uncaring. It has not controlled its budgets. It has not been efficient. In correspondence, it produces all sorts of warm words, but my constituents have been disappointed by its performance, particularly in the past couple of years.
It is unacceptable for the social services department suddenly to impose a respite home on the high-class residential area of Long Copse in Astley village in my constituency. No notice was given. There will be tremendous extra usage of resources, extra traffic and unacceptable noise and disturbance to residents in an area that is unsuitable for such a home. At the same time, I told county council officials that a disused building would have been admirable for the purpose and was within a
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Mention has been made of residential homes and of whether provision for people who need such a service should be made in-house by Lancashire county council or by the private sector. Much of the underspend this year and two years ago occurred because the council was reluctant to place spending in private sector hands.
In that connection, there is a dramatic increase in costs. In-house residential care costs an extra £93 per resident per week, more than in the private sector. That gives rise to a difference in cost of £10 million annually between the public and private sectors and it is one reason why we do not receive best value for money from the council. The standard home care service--domiciliary care--would cost £5 million more if provided in-house rather than by the private sector. That is about £15 million straight away. Compare that with the education spend and the policy statements issued by the Labour-controlled county council in the past few years, saying that there will be cuts in education spending and in the school budgets.
We have heard about the underspending. As in the past, the county council has raised a supplementary rate with no prior notice, which was damaging to individuals and businesses. As they did then, councillors have put the money from underspending into reserves so that, just before county council elections and the probable general election on 1 May, they can show what good, honest citizens they have been on behalf of county council residents and say, "We are going to reduce this and reduce that." I should like to think so. I think that the council will be pressing for that, but let us await events.
It is crazy that, as I said, the county council says, "We need cuts, cuts, cuts in education. We cannot give enough funds to schools," and then calls for an enormous rise of hundreds of millions in the education budget and of tens of millions for education spend in Lancashire.
Mr. Atkins:
Did not the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer make it clear, as my hon. Friends will recall, that, if there were to be a Labour Government, there would be no extra funds for local government? Why therefore are Labour Members saying that more money should be spent when, if they were to form a Government, they would not be making such provision? It therefore depends on Conservatives and a Conservative administration in the county--if that is what happens--being more efficient.
Mr. Dover:
I agree entirely, and it is yet another example of Labour saying one thing and doing another, or intending to do another.
If there is not enough money in the county council, why underspend on social services? Why not divert funds to education? Why the enormous brouhaha and cry for an area cost adjustment investigation, and what has that shown? Lancashire is overfunded compared with, say, Cheshire. If there were a change because of the academic and independent research, Cheshire would gain, Lancashire would lose and, guess what, we would be subjected to less education and school spending.
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We shall see what happens. I hope and am optimistic that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will put education at the top of the spend, as we have in the past with social services and community care. After all, Lancashire started off with the largest community care budget in Britain, and that has been frittered away over the years by inefficiency.
A few months ago, Marylands residential care home on the A6 main road in Chorley was closed. Many of the home's clients had no prior warning. There had been an appeal and a tribunal finding. They rightly telephoned me that day to say, "Why is it that our parents"--or grandparents--"are having to be moved out with no notice?" I should like that to be investigated because it is unacceptable.
As we all know only too well, recently, the home help and care assistance service was massively adjusted by the county council, to the detriment of elderly citizens. I pay tribute to the self-supporting attitude of elderly residents in my Chorley constituency, who are typical of Lancashire and who look after themselves as far as possible, but they need help and assistance, yet that has suddenly been withdrawn.
On 29 August, I wrote to the director of social services to say:
Mr. Hawkins:
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the difficulties is that, although--as we all accept--there are some dedicated officers working for the county council, they are constantly constrained when trying to help, by the political direction that they receive from the Labour leadership of the county council social services department, and by the type of policies that led to the unacceptable political propaganda that I mentioned earlier? Even the most dedicated people, who are genuinely concerned about caring, simply are not allowed by their Labour political masters to deliver that care.
"I understand that recently you have reversed many of the decisions regarding home helps and care assistance--and I greatly welcome this."
I thought that there had been a change of mind, that the county council had realised that it was overspending, had cut here and there and had uncaringly ditched the needs of the elderly. I thought that things were looking up, but no. I received a reply on 10 September from the director of social services, which said:
"I have not reversed any decisions and neither, to the best of my knowledge, have any other senior officers. Some individuals who had home care services withdrawn or reduced in the past have sought re-assessment of their care needs--as they have always been able to do--and in some cases the social care assessment has indicated a current need for services which have then been arranged. I am aware that this has been described in some quarters as a reversal of decisions but that is not an accurate description, and the number of cases quoted appears to be inaccurate."
I thought that my praise and thanks would be reciprocated and that I would receive a sensible reply. Surely to goodness, it should not be up to the media and Members of Parliament to bring about a change of mind by the county council, in the interests of our constituents. The unacceptable situation in which services were withdrawn should never have occurred.
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