00:00I've sat on the same meetings as you as a South Shropshire MP and you're North Shropshire
00:10and the impact that we have in Shropshire on social care is about 80% of the council
00:18funding goes towards that. Do you believe that we need a fairer system? Does the honourable
00:24Member believe we need a fairer system to support funding for social care in Shropshire?
00:31Well I thank you for his intervention and I think that fair funding for rural authorities
00:37and indeed all local authorities is a point that I've made many times in this House and
00:41I absolutely agree with him on that. So we saw in the budget £600 million allocated
00:46to social care and an increase in the national living wage and both of those things are obviously
00:51welcome but the huge pressure on private providers from the NIC increase is going to
00:58be really problematic unless councils are funded to pay for those additional costs and
01:02it's not clear to me that the funding announced in the budget will really touch the sides
01:07of the crisis in local government funding and the crisis in social care. Now we all
01:12know that this is a thorny problem, that funding social care is extremely expensive and it's
01:17difficult and that's why cross-party talks are so urgent and so I urge the Secretary
01:21of State to instigate those as soon as possible so that we can work towards a permanent fix
01:26for social care. Liberal Democrats believe free personal care on the Scotland model would
01:31be the best way of achieving that and the Institute for Public Policy Research says
01:36that we could save £3.3 billion by 2031 by implementing that and I think that would be
01:42a good investment because it would save taxpayer money and it would keep people in their homes
01:47with dignity where they wanted to be.
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