• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / Independent Living / MPs make ‘crucial’ call over national tax rises to solve social care funding crisis
Peter Beresford head and shoulders

MPs make ‘crucial’ call over national tax rises to solve social care funding crisis

By John Pring on 6th April 2017 Category: Independent Living

Listen

A committee of MPs has issued a “crucially important” call for the government to consider increasing national taxes as a way of solving the adult social care funding crisis.

Two high-profile reports published this week highlighted the continuing funding crisis, one by the Commons communities and local government select committee, and the other by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

The select committee report concludes that inadequate funding was having a “serious impact” on both the quality and level of care, and said that a “long-term fix” was “urgently necessary”.

It calls on the government to work with parties across the political spectrum as it prepares its green paper on the long-term funding of social care.

The report says that any discussions should proceed on the basis that “all options are on the table”, including raising money from national taxation – such as income tax, national insurance or inheritance tax – purely to pay for social care. 

Days later, IFS published a report on changes in council-funded social care in England since 2009-10.

The IFS report, funded by the charity the Health Foundation, found that spending by councils on social care per adult resident fell by 11 per cent in real terms between 2009-10 and 2015-16.

But it also found a significant variation in spending between local authorities, with one in 10 spending less than £325 per adult resident, and one in 10 spending more than £445 per adult resident.

About six in seven local authorities reduced adult social care spending over the seven years, with one in 10 cutting spending by more than a quarter, and one council cutting funding by nearly 40 per cent.

Cuts were largest in London boroughs (an average of 18 per cent) and metropolitan districts such as Greater Manchester, Tyneside and Greater Birmingham (16 per cent), while they were lowest in southern shire counties (seven per cent) and southern unitary authorities (five per cent).

Other research has shown that the number of people receiving local authority care between 2009-10 and 2013-14 fell by about a quarter, from 1.7 million to 1.3 million.

Professor Peter Beresford (pictured), co-chair of the national servicer-user and disabled people’s network Shaping Our Lives, said he believed the select committee report’s recommendation to look at national taxation as a possible solution was “crucially important and in my view the only sustainable way forward” and “the first time for a long time” this had been raised.

He said: “The scale of the crisis in social care funding is now reflected in the frequency and profile of major reports about it.”

He added: “The respected IFS’s report reveals a disastrous and unravelling mess.

“But it also paints a more complex picture than is usually offered, with significant differentials in local spend and some councils making much bigger cuts than others, as well as double whammies resulting from welfare cuts.”

Sue Bott, deputy chief executive of Disability Rights UK (DR UK), said: “The cuts to social care outlined in the IFS report and the impact of underfunding of social care outlined in the select committee’s report will come as no surprise to disabled people who are reliant on social care, many of whom are effectively institutionalised in their own homes. 

“Once again we will all say how shocking these figures are, which they truly are, but will anything happen? 

“We are promised yet another green paper, giving us yet another opportunity to say what needs to happen. 

“DR UK will certainly engage in that process, arguing that disabled people’s support needs need to be funded and joined up so that we can enjoy independent living and play our part as full and equal citizens in our communities. 

“But faced with a government that is not listening we need to do much more joining with others, such as on the Independent Living Strategy Group [a network of disabled people’s organisations and their allies, chaired by the disabled peer Baroness (Jane) Campbell], and giving disabled people the tools to challenge the decisions that restrict our lives.”

Share this post:

Share on X (Twitter)Share on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on Reddit

Tags: Disability Rights UK IFS Professor Peter Beresford social care Sue Bott

Related

Ministers push ahead with ‘highly damaging’ plans on ‘fit for work’ assessment
23rd November 2023
Research exposes hardship and emotional harm caused by care charges
23rd November 2023
King’s speech ‘shows a government failing to prioritise disabled people’
9th November 2023

Primary Sidebar

Access

Latest Stories

Anger over Labour’s ‘shameful’ silence on universal credit’s ‘deadly faults’

Activists welcome decision to reassess status of UK’s ‘pathetic’ human rights watchdog

Disabled HGV driver accuses ‘back to work’ ministers of hypocrisy over equality laws

‘Warrior’ disabled mum takes crucial step in ‘justice for Jodey’ fight

Disabled students told their access needs are ‘a nuisance’, survey finds

Music festival operator signs legal agreement after multiple access failings

Disabled people ‘must rediscover appetite for fighting oppression’

Ministers push ahead with ‘highly damaging’ plans on ‘fit for work’ assessment

DWP told to release ‘worst case scenario’ report on impact of errors on claimants

Flawed universal credit means government’s plans for sanctions ‘are inexplicable’

Advice and Information

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2023 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web