| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Howard Flight (Arundel and South Downs): Does my hon. Friend agree that, faced with those problems--and although the social services department has an excellent record--it is monstrous that the gerrymandering of the standard spending assessment funding has resulted in a 10.4 per cent. cut in the social security budget this year, notwithstanding a 7.4 per cent. increase in council tax? Does he deplore what has happened? We were given the lowest award in the whole country and the special transitional grant was not phased into the SSA rollover.
Mr. Loughton: My hon. Friend anticipates the point that I was coming to. We have said that we need special help for special age-related problems, but West Sussex received the lowest Government grant of any shire county in England recently. There was, on the face of it, an increase of 3.8 per cent., against an average of 5.2 per cent., but, as my hon. Friend said, after adjustments for community care funding, nursery voucher abolition and discretionary arrangements, the increase was only 2.2 per cent.
The social services figure is even worse; it suffered a reduction of £4.7 million after adjusting for last year's special transitional grant, which is not to be rolled forward. That is the 10th-lowest increase of all 150 councils in the country and, again, the lowest of all shire counties.
The additional £1.7 million for West Sussex announced only two days ago--it is amazing what an imminent Adjournment debate can achieve--is a small improvement, but it comes at the same time as the teachers' pay award and other new responsibilities for local authorities. It is a drop in the ocean in terms of the deficit on social services alone. Incredibly, the number of people in residential care has been excluded from the calculation of funding needs for people in residential care. Therefore, funding does not take account of people moving into residential care in West Sussex from other areas of the country.
Under Labour's first local government settlement, West Sussex social services had to make savings of £2.5 million, which is almost as much as the total savings for the previous four years put together. It is often assumed that wealthy West Sussex is a soft touch for large increases in charges. However, as the joint review by the Social Services Inspectorate and the Audit Commission observed:
Other Government changes have compounded the problem. The abolition of tax relief on private medical insurance in Labour's first Budget has particularly affected Worthing, which has the highest number of pensioners with such policies. That has undoubtedly led to an increase in waiting lists.
Mr. Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton):
My hon. Friend explains very well the difficulties faced by the elderly in West Sussex. Is he aware that retired people will suffer severely from the array of stealth taxes introduced by the Government? They will pay £95 a year extra because of the reduction in the value of the married couples' allowance, £50 a year more because of extra duties on petrol, and an additional £75 a year because of the abolition of the repayment of dividend tax credits.
Mr. Andrew Tyrie (Chichester):
Further to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb), I have received many letters making exactly that point. It is clear that many people in my constituency who are on modest incomes have been hit by the decision to abolish ACT dividend tax credit. The 1997 Budget was disastrous for them. Does my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Mr. Loughton) have the same experience in his constituency?
Mr. Loughton:
I completely agree with the points made by my two hon. Friends. The abolition of dividend tax credits will affect more than 300,000 people nationally. Many of my constituents are the typical victims of that measure. Those people may have just a few shares. They may, on the face of it, be asset rich in that they own their own home and a few shares from privatisations or building society demutualisations, but they are income poor, and to take away a large chunk of that income exacerbates their poverty. Despite the Paymaster General's assurances that there are alternatives, there are none for those people.
Honest attempts by poorer pensioners in West Sussex to save in retirement and for their retirement to enable them to stand on their own two feet have, through recent stealth tax changes, been dealt a blow by an intransigent Government.
Many people in West Sussex may be forgiven for thinking that the Government are Sussexist. I should like to pay tribute to hospital and social services staff across the county for the excellent job they are doing in difficult circumstances. I also pay tribute to our county council staff for their sensitivity in handling these appalling settlements. When West Sussex suffers, our poorer pensioners, in abundance, bear the brunt. I ask the Government to give proper recognition to the very real and growing funding problems that go with having such a high population of pensioners in our county.
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West)
rose--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin):
Order. I am sorry, I cannot call the hon. Member for Worthing, West (Mr. Bottomley). He has not intimated that he wishes to speak.
Mr. Bottomley:
If I have done wrong, I apologise. My impression was that, if one stood up during the debate,
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Does the hon. Gentleman have the Minister's permission to speak in the debate?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. John Hutton):
Yes, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Mr. Loughton) on his initiative. I hope that the Minister and his colleagues will agree to meet a deputation from the organisations that are concerned with the illnesses and circumstances of the elderly. We know that we cannot change the rate support grant settlement for this year, although the extra £1 million is welcome. If, in the years to come, we face the prospect of more and more money being taken away from social services and less and less money being available as increases for the health services, people with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and others will be hurt.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. John Hutton):
I congratulate the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Mr. Loughton) on securing this important debate. I welcome the tribute that he paid to NHS and local authority staff in West Sussex. I am aware that a high proportion of older people live in West Sussex, especially in the hon. Gentleman's constituency and the surrounding area. That has an impact on social care and local health services, and I welcome the opportunity to discuss the way in which our policies and our positive agenda will improve vital services in the hon. Gentleman's constituency.
Older people make an enormous contribution to our national life, and the Government are determined to ensure that their wishes and needs are taken seriously. We also intend to ensure that older people are valued properly and can play their full part in society as a whole.
The hon. Gentleman has raised some specific issues, and I shall try to address as many as possible in the time available. He referred to mental health pressures in his constituency, but he conveniently forgot to mention the Government's "Modernising Mental Health Services" strategy document, which we published in December. On top of the initial spending that we have allocated to mental health services in Britain, we are making a further £700 million available to support modern mental health services in England. Within that strategy, we have recognised the need for extra beds in the acute sector, throughout the service into the community and in the high-security forensic services. If the hon. Gentleman has time, he should look at our strategy document, and he may draw some satisfaction from it.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to nursing shortages. I am sure that he welcomes the excellent news--which the Secretary of State gave at Health questions yesterday--that nurses not currently working in the NHS have shown significant interest in returning to employment within the NHS. That is a positive response to our advertising campaign. Given that response and the nurses' pay award, we are confident that we shall begin to address the problem of nursing shortages in the short and medium term.
"Charges already represent a substantial proportion of gross expenditure and the scope for greatly increasing income seems limited."
So the nearly poor are paying for the really poor. It is little wonder that the recent settlement was condemned in West Sussex, by all parties, as grotesque and devastating.
1.14 pm
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |