Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South, Labour)

I want to talk about support for the 6 million unpaid carers who provide social care to a family member or friend. More people are having to step in to provide high levels of care to family members. The 2001 census, about which we have heard so much today, found that 10% of all carers in the UK were caring for more than 50 hours per week, but figures published more recently by the NHS information centre show that that has now more than doubled to 22%. In Salford, the proportion has been much higher for some time: 24% of Salford carers cared for more than 50 hours per week in 2001, which was more than twice the national figure.

Carers are key partners in care for the NHS, but full-time care takes a toll on the carer's own health, and their health needs should be recognised. Carers who care for more than 50 hours a week are twice as likely to suffer ill health as the general population, and those caring for a person suffering from dementia or stroke disease are also more at risk. Importantly, carers who do not receive a break from caring are much more likely to suffer mental health problems-that is, 36% of carers compared with 17% who do get a break.

The Government have announced £400 million of funding for carers' breaks over four years, to be delivered through primary care trusts initially, but there are problems with this because the funding is not ring-fenced. The Labour Government allocated £150 million over three years to primary care trusts for carers' breaks, but a survey by the Princess Royal Trust for Carers in 2009 found that less than a quarter of the first tranche of that funding had been used as intended to support carers. Given the financial pressures that are now facing primary care trusts, and their impending abolition in the NHS reorganisation, it is hard to see them doing a better job for carers now than they did last year when they did not have those pressures. There is great concern among carers and carers' organisations about the impact of the NHS reorganisation and cuts to local authority budgets. Carers UK says that carers are worried that when commissioning is handed over to GPs they will lose services on which they are relying. Many carers have negative experiences of dealing with GPs who do not have a good understanding of social care or of the specialist conditions that are giving rise to the care.

There is also much concern about cuts to social care that councils are making in response to the 27% cuts in their budgets over the next four years. The cuts are front-loaded, so together with the loss of area-based grants that were targeted at deprived areas, councils such as those in my area of Salford will have to make cuts of £40 million next year alone. The Government are putting £2 billion into councils' social care budgets over four years, but that is only half of the £4 billion that the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services has estimated is needed to meet increasing levels of need. In addition, social care is one of the biggest areas of each council's budget, yet the new money is not ring-fenced either, so councils are facing budget cuts of £5.6 billion over the same period. It is hard to imagine that social care will not be part of that.

To read the ful transcript http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2010-12-21a.1341.0