Assessing the Emergency Budget for the Care Sector

Not for the first time in the last few weeks the care sector is finding its professionals and campaigners eagerly assessing the political landscape to work out what direction events are likely to take. This desire for preparation and forward planning, however, seems to be complicated by a political situation that few seem experienced enough to be able to read and, as with the ever-present debate over how best to steady a fragile economy in a growing storm, often trying to ascertain whether the critical needs of the elderly and vulnerable are being protected or being put at risk is not as simple or clear-cut as one might expect.

The immediate signs, after one of the most controversial and ominous Budgets for decades had been revealed, were positive ones, though any care professionals who sat through the speech would have had to wait until its final moments for a silver lining, at which point Chancellor George Osborne announced that the coalition Government would renew the link between the state pension and capital gains tax and, in so doing, would protect the elderly from the same cuts and tax increases that the rest of society would have to come to terms with.

So the pre-election acknowledgement, from all three major parties, that an ageing population would be one of the next Government’s chief concerns, would seem to have been honoured – even if the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives could boast no consensus on securing healthy long-term care provision (an independent review is to report back on the issue within the next 12 months). As is so often the case with budgets, however, further scrutiny and reading between the lines produces quite a different perspective of exactly who will be affected and some of the more complicated problems that implementing developments in expenditure will cause.

An obvious source of disappointment was the cutting of disability benefits, leading to the question of why the Government would wish to stick up for one section of society’s vulnerable citizens but not another? Further to this came the realisation that elderly people, especially those receiving social care services, are just as likely to be affected by this budget as anyone else. Local authorities and NHS trusts are to experience significant public sector cuts that will affect all the services they provide, including home care contracts, as the coalition has confirmed it is not considering enforcing the ‘ringfencing’ of any particular area of public expenditure. It may be that the pockets of the elderly have been protected by the amendment to capital gains tax, but the vital public services available to them have not.

Another widely-voiced point of anxiety, though always a key issue for care sector debate, is the relationship between the public and private sector and which should be drawn upon as offering the most opportunities. Unfortunately if the result of the Budget is one of economic limbo, it might be that the sector will never find out the answer, as fears that independent care homes will have their fees cut may seriously impact upon the interests of potential investors. Though this possibility does not seem to have softened the fierce opposition to privatisation attempts, which if anything has intensified under an uncertain economic climate as one of many battles trade unions might be prepared to fight.