Care proposals ‘fantasy’ without funding strategy, warns Lord Warner

Expectations the Government would announce a separate funding package for long-term social care in the recent white paper and Bill were unfounded, care minister, Paul Burstow has told council chiefs.

Addressing the Local Government Association’s community wellbeing board yesterday, the care minister said councils would have a leading role in prevention – which involves closer co-operation, collaboration and integration with the NHS – but warned expectations around funding settlements in the next spending round must be tempered.

‘Funding reform and funding were conflated,’ in the run up to the social care Bill and white paper, argued Burstow, who stated the £7.2bn spending review increase in social care – which involves the transfer of NHS cash ‘has been essential in shaping decisions on the ground’.

‘I’m puzzled by the expectation we would step outside the 2010 spending review. It would have been unprecedented and the Government never hinted it would,’ said Mr Burstow.

Local authorities were urged work to ensure the best social care provision becomes universally available by the minister, who also vowed not to ‘name and shame’ individual councils over their social care performance.

Fellow panellist, former health minister and Kent CC social care director Lord Norman Warner – who served on the Dilnot commission on care funding – welcomed the Government’s acceptance of a cap on lifetime contributions.

Lord Warner said he had ‘no problem’ with the cap being higher than the £35,000 recommended last summer by the Dilnot commission – arguing a limit of between £60,000-£70,000 ‘was not unreasonable in the current climate’.

However, he said it was extremely difficult to establish council-run deferred payment systems without a fixed cap and the funding certainty underpinning them.

‘A white paper lacking a funding strategy is as much a fantasy as 50 Shades of Grey,’ Lord Warner noted.