The biggest area of spending for councils is the provision of adult social care.
It therefore comes as no surprise that the huge cuts to council budgets handed down from central government have had a profound impact on social care.
The Conservatives’ failure to properly fund care in the community and nursing homes has created a vicious cycle, as patients are unable to leave hospital when appropriate, costing the NHS money and driving up waiting lists.
What’s more, analysis from Age UK last year found that 2.6 million people aged 50 and over were living with some form of unmet need for care in England.
No recent government has been willing to truly get to grips with the crisis in social care and try to put it on a sustainable footing.
The last to even come up with an idea was Theresa May, and that idea was so unpopular that it lost her an election!
That scared the Tories off trying to come up with a solution, whilst the Labour Party tends to talk about some vague and unspecified ‘reform’ in a way that inspires zero confidence.
With that in mind, I was excited to see Lib Dem leader Ed Davey lay out a plan a couple of weeks ago to truly get to grips with the crisis in social care.
He announced that Lib Dems would fund free nursing care for everyone who needs it, as well as support with mobility, hygiene and medication - allowing more people to receive the care they need at home, and putting an end to the indignity of people being forced to sell their house to pay for care.
Liberal Democrats have also announced a policy of a higher minimum wage for carers, which would go some way to addressing the staff shortages in the sector.
This proposal would of course cost money, but we estimate that it would result in savings of £3 billion per year through reductions in costs to the NHS and care homes - which is more than half of the cost of the policy!
It was welcomed by the chief executive of MHA, the largest charity care provider for older people in Great Britain, who called the policy “a good step forward” in tackling “one of the biggest challenges facing the country today”.
As is so often the case, it is the Liberal Democrats who are leading the debate on the issues facing the country, just as we did when we were the first to call for a windfall tax on oil and gas. Let’s hope that the Government steals this policy as well!
- Luke Cawley-Harrison is Liberal Democrat councillor of Crouch End ward and leader of the opposition, Haringey Council.
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