On the eve of the Budget, the row about whether ministers struck a ‘sweetheart deal’ with Surrey Council on social care funding to stop the local authority from having to hold a referendum on raising council tax has blown up again. BBC Surrey has recorded extracts of a meeting between council leader David Hodge and colleagues in which he talks of a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ that was struck with Sajid Javid. The councillor claims that such agreements often take place in the Conservative party.
This is particularly unhelpful for ministers if they are planning to tell councils to buck their ideas up about social care, as they seem to be preparing to do tomorrow. Javid, Philip Hammond and others have been preparing the ground on this, pointing out at departmental questions and in op-eds that just 24 local authorities account for 50 per cent of all the delayed discharges from NHS wards.
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