Labour puts Tories in the dock for 'reckless' adult social care cuts

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has accused the Prime Minister of ‘failing elderly people who need social care’ in a series of shots fired at Theresa May during Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs).

‘Reckless social care cuts'

"Will the Prime Minister also address the reckless and counter-productive adult social care cuts that have been made by her predecessor?” was one of several health and social care questions asked by the Labour leader during PMQs on 19 October.

May: “We’ve put the funding in”

In response, Theresa May said: “Over £5bn extra was put into the Better Care Fund precisely to deal with these issues. Local authorities are able to raise that two per cent of council tax to deal with social care costs that they are facing."

The Prime Minister’s references to the ‘Right honourable gentleman’ from the dispatch box were soon overshadowed by Mr Corbyn’s dogged determination to turn the spotlight on the Conservative party’s record on health and social care, which fuelled angry exchanges back and forth across the floor of the House of Commons.

Mrs May argued: “What is important is actually the health service and local authorities working together. To ensure they are delivering the best possible service for people who require that social care.

“We’ve put the funding in.”

But the Prime Minister's comment on working together was mocked by the Labour leader who said: “We all want local government and the NHS to work together.

"But the problem is that local government funding has been cut. 400,000 fewer people are receiving publicly-funded social care as a result of that.

“The NHS is having difficulty coping with the crisis they are in. Therefore there is unfortunately ‘bed blocking’ where acute patients cannot leave because there’s no social care available for them. “

Jeremy Corbyn referenced the words of NHS providers, who called it the worst financial crisis in NHS history. He said: “Yesterday [18 October] at the select committee Simon Stevens [NHS England's chief executive] made it very clear he doesn’t believe that NHS England has enough money to get through the crisis it's facing.”

As her health secretary Jeremy Hunt looked on, Theresa May hit back: “We asked the NHS itself to come up with a five-year plan, and we asked the NHS itself to say what extra funding was needed to deliver on that.

“The NHS came up with its five-year plan, led by Simon Stevens as its chief executive. He said that £8 billion was needed. We are giving £10 billion of extra funding to the NHS.”

“Over the course of this parliament the Government will be spending over half a trillion pounds on the NHS. That is a record level of investment in our NHS. After every election we increase NHS spending.”

PMQs, coming just days after the Care Quality Commission published its State of Care 2015/16 report, sparked Jeremy Corbyn to tell the Prime Minister: ”Can I offer an analysis from the Care Quality Commission which seem to have quite a good grasp of what’s going on?

"They say that cuts to adult social care 'translating to increased accident and emergency attendancies, emergency admissions and delays to people leaving hospital which in turn is affecting the ability of a growing number of Trusts to meet their performance and financial targets."