Tag: Lord Warner

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2015-11-11.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of their experience with the collapse of Southern Cross, what contingency plans they have in the event of a significant withdrawal of large and medium-sized providers of residential and nursing home care from the provision of publicly-funded social care.

Lord Prior of Brampton

It is unacceptable for vulnerable people who need care and support to have their services interrupted if their provider fails financially.

The Care Act 2014 placed duties on local authorities to step in and ensure people’s needs continue to be met if their provider fails financially and their services cease. These duties apply to all people receiving care services, regardless of who pays for them, and there are reciprocal arrangements in all countries of the United Kingdom. The Government has supported local authorities with this duty and recently published guidance for local authorities to assist them in developing contingency plans for managing provider failure. This guidance was co-produced with the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and the Local Government information Unit.

The Care Act also established the Care Quality Commission (CQC) with a new function to oversee the finances of the largest and most difficult to replace providers. This oversight function would provide early warning to relevant local authorities in the event that one of the providers in the CQC scheme was likely to fail financially and their services cease. This would allow local authorities time to implement contingency plans. This CQC Market Oversight scheme is now fully functional.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2015-12-21.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment the Department of Health, NHS England, or the Care Quality Commission, have made of the availability of residential care for people with learning difficulty at the rates that local authorities across England are now able to pay for such accommodation; and what information the Care Quality Commission has on the availability of such accommodation as part of their market oversight function.

Lord Prior of Brampton

Information about the availability of residential care for people with learning difficulties and the fee rates paid by local authorities for these services is not collected centrally. Commissioning adult social care is a matter for local authorities as they are best placed to understand the needs their local people and communities, and how best to meet them.

The Department has put in place a range of Sector-Led Improvement support to help local authorities to improve their commissioning practice, and to comply with the statutory guidance. For example the Department funds the Local Government Association (LGA) and Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) to deliver, through their regional networks, practical risk assessment tools and hands-on improvement support delivered by a cohort of professional experts.

The Department has also worked with ADASS, LGA and others to co-produce a set of commissioning standards, Commissioning for Better Outcomes that was re-launched in October 2015. These standards amplify the good practice set out in the statutory guidance, and provide a further practical resource on which to base local risk assessment and to guide improvement support and action planning where required. The standards are attached.

There has been no assessment by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) of the availability of residential care for people with learning difficulty at the rates that local authorities across England are now able to pay for such accommodation and the CQC holds no information on the availability of such accommodation as part of its Market Oversight function. This is because these issues fall outside the scope of the Market Oversight Scheme.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2016-02-02.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to the finding of the report by the Fair Admissions Campaign and the British Humanist Association last year An Unholy Mess that a significant number of religiously selective schools are asking parents for information they do not need, and are not allowed to ask for, such as whether they are UK nationals or speak English as an additional language.

Lord Nash

Admission authorities for all state-funded schools, including schools with a religious designation, are required to comply with the mandatory provisions of the School Admissions Code and other admissions law.

Where an objection is made to the Schools Adjudicator, if the arrangements are found to be unfair or fail to comply with the Code, the admission authority must make changes to ensure their arrangements are compliant without undue delay. Where an admission authority fails to implement decisions of the adjudicator, the Secretary of State may direct the admission authority to do so.

We continue to keep the Code under review, and, where we consider any changes are necessary to make the admissions system work more effectively for parents, these will be subject to a full public consultation.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2016-05-25.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what guidance has been issued by the Department for Education to local authorities about the transfer of children’s social care services to an arms-length trust; and what role the Department and its Ministers play in advising or approving local authority decisions to make such transfers, including provision of financial support.

Lord Nash

The Department for Education has not issued guidance to local authorities about the transfer of children’s social care services to a trust. The Prime Minister announced in December 2015 that, where Ofsted find persistent or systematic failure in a council’s children’s social care services, we will appoint a commissioner to review, within three months, whether services should be removed from council control. There is now a presumption that services will be placed outside of the Council’s control in these cases, unless the Commissioner identifies good reasons not to do so.

Decisions to transfer local authority children’s social care services to other organisations are subject to ministerial approval only where a local authority is in intervention following an inadequate Ofsted judgement. Other high-performing local authorities are also considering innovative delivery models, such as trusts, for their services. Financial support may be provided on a case-by-case basis.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2015-11-18.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what information they have received from the UN or other independent sources about the number of (1) deaths of, and (2) injuries to, (a) Palestinians, and (b) Israelis, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a result of attacks for each of the last three years; what information they have on the number of perpetrators brought to justice for such attacks in the last 12 months; and what representations they have made to the government of Israel in the past 12 months on those issues.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs website, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) in 2013 there were 38 Palestinians fatalities and 3,800 injured; in 2014 there were 2,310 Palestinian fatalities and 16,626 injured; and so far from 1 January 2015 to 16 November 2015 there have been 106 Palestinian fatalities and 10,626 injured. According to the same website, there were 77 Israeli fatalities in 2014 in the OPTs; and so far from 1 January to 16 November 2015 there have been 14 Israeli fatalities in the OPTs.

We regularly discuss these issues with the Israeli government, both our condemnation of the attacks and the need to ensure justice for victims, and for the need for the perpetrators to be arrested and brought to justice. Officials from our Embassy in Tel Aviv most recently discussed these issues with the Israeli Ministry of Justice on 3 November 2015.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2015-12-21.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the latest assessment available to the Department of Health or NHS England of the annual loss of bed days to the NHS owing to the inability to discharge people from acute hospitals who do not need clinically to be occupying a bed in those hospitals; what is the estimated cost of such occupancy; and what assessment has been made of the cost-effectiveness of the NHS purchasing accommodation directly in nursing or residential care homes for such patients when a local authority is unable to do so.

Lord Prior of Brampton

The latest figures show that between April and October 2015, there were 1,041,587 delayed transfer of care. The Department has made no formal estimate of the costs of delayed discharge to the National Health Service or of the cost-effectiveness of the NHS purchasing accommodation directly in nursing or residential care homes for such patients when a local authority is unable to do so.

It is recognised that such delayed discharges do use resource which could be deployed elsewhere, and all parts of the NHS and those with responsibility outside it, are continually looking for ways in which to reduce the number of delays.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2016-02-02.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to the finding of the report by the Fair Admissions Campaign and the British Humanist Association last year An Unholy Mess that a significant number of religiously selective schools are not allowing all applicants to be admitted, even when a school is undersubscribed, and what steps they are taking to ensure that all schools comply with the School Admissions Code in this regard.

Lord Nash

Admission authorities for all state-funded schools, including schools with a religious designation, are required to comply with the mandatory provisions of the School Admissions Code and other admissions law.

Where an objection is made to the Schools Adjudicator, if the arrangements are found to be unfair or fail to comply with the Code, the admission authority must make changes to ensure their arrangements are compliant without undue delay. Where an admission authority fails to implement decisions of the adjudicator, the Secretary of State may direct the admission authority to do so.

We continue to keep the Code under review, and, where we consider any changes are necessary to make the admissions system work more effectively for parents, these will be subject to a full public consultation.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2016-05-25.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what changes to local authority accountability for children’s social care services take place if these services are transferred to the management of an arms-length trust.

Lord Nash

Statutory responsibility for children’s social care services remains with the local authority, but its functions are delegated to and carried out by the trust on the authority’s behalf. The accountabilities are set out in a service delivery contract between the authority and the trust.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2015-11-25.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what guidance they plan to issue on the integration of health and social care services, in the light of their commitment to do so by 2020 at paragraph 2.49 of the Spending Review and Autumn Statement 2015; whether that guidance will cover integrated budgets for those services locally and nationally; and whether new legislation will be required to ensure that integration.

Lord Prior of Brampton

It is clear from progress already made up and down the country towards the integration of health and social care that there is no single ‘correct’ way to achieve the Government’s ambition of full integration by 2020. On this basis, the Government will encourage areas to design and implement those solutions that are most appropriate for their own context, and will avoid setting out an overly prescriptive policy framework, including with respect to the integration of budgets.

However, in order to ensure that adequate progress is made in the given timeframe, and that the benefits of integration are realised both for members of the public and for health and social care organisations, it will be important to set out the Government’s minimum expectations for integration. Areas will be expected to pay regard to these minimum expectations when setting out their plans for integration by 2020, and it will be by demonstrating that they have moved beyond this baseline that they will be entitled to graduate from the existing Better Care Fund programme management, which will continue to be mandatory in 2016-17.

The existing legislative framework already provides a great degree of flexibility for local areas wishing to pursue different approaches to the integration of health and social care. The Government will work closely with local areas in the years to 2020 to understand the limits of this legislative framework and to understand how any limits can be overcome.

It is the intention that guidance will be published in 2016 reflecting the position set out above, and it is likely that this guidance will include material on the integration of budgets.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2016-01-20.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what percentage of gross domestic product was spent on (1) the NHS and public health, (2) publicly financed adult social care, and (3) both of those, in (a) 1996–97, (b) 2000–01, (c) 2009–10, and (d) for each year thereafter up to and including 2014–15.

Lord Prior of Brampton

Spend as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) is usually reported on a United Kingdom basis.

The Department is responsible for reporting on health spend in England and is not in a position to provide equivalent spend figures for health and adult social care by the devolved administrations.

HM Treasury publish UK health spend figures as a percentage of GDP which are shown in table below.

Spend on health in UK as % of GDP

Year	UK Public Spending on health as a % of GDP
1996/97	5.0%
2000/01	5.2%
2009/10	7.8%
2010/11	7.6%
2011/12	7.4%
2012/13	7.5%
2013/14	7.5%
2014/15	7.4%

Source: Table 4.4 HMT, Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2015.

Numbers shown do not include total spend on adult social care