If ministers are going to offer any concessions in the row over Universal Credit, they’ve decided to keep them back for a little while longer. This afternoon MPs have been holding an emergency debate on the reform, with Employment Minister Damian Hinds defending the reform and the roll-out, rather than suggesting that the government is going to accept the suggestions of Tory and Labour MPs on delayed payments.
The emergency debate was called after Conservative MPs were whipped to abstain on Labour’s Opposition Day debate on the benefit reform last week. I reported after that vote that many Tories were peeved about this; either because they were in marginal seats and were worried about coming under fire for not taking a view, or because they were annoyed that they couldn’t vote for their party’s welfare policy.
The government is in a defensive mood at the moment, but it knows it needs to come up with a different tactic for the next Opposition Day debate, which is on social care. Labour has become much more effective at using these debates to cause a stir over the past few months, and I understand that the whips still do not know what to do about tomorrow’s vote. Tory MPs do not want another instruction to abstain, and the government will provoke a row with people who aren’t particularly interested in social care but are very protective of Parliament. Those parliamentarians believe, however, that they may be close to an agreement with the government that ministers will be forced to respond to any Opposition Day defeats with an explanation of how they are taking heed of the view expressed by the Commons.
A row tomorrow would be all the more unnecessary if, as seems to be the case, there are no Tories who actually want to rebel and vote with Labour on the motion anyway. Some are worried that they will lose their clout behind the scenes if they rebel too often, and that therefore they won’t have the chance to really push for a long-term sustainable funding settlement. Others may be put off by the Opposition’s motion, which reads:
‘That this House notes the Conservative Party’s manifesto commitment to a funding proposal for social care which would have no cap on care costs and would include the value of homes in the means test for care at home; further notes that this proposal would leave people with a maximum of only £100,000 of assets; calls on the government to confirm its intention not to proceed with this commitment; and further calls on the government to remove the threat to withdraw social care funding from, and stop fines on, local authorities for Delayed Transfers of Care and to commit to the extra funding needed to close the social care funding gap for 2017 and for the remaining years of the 2017 Parliament.’
Now, while few Tory MPs want the government to introduce the manifesto commitment that started the unravelling of the snap election, they probably also don’t want to be reminded of that commitment, or associated with a motion that reminds ministers of what a catastrophe that policy ended up being.
The Delayed Transfers of Care line relates to a threat issued in the past few weeks by Communities Secretary Sajid Javid and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt that councils could have their overall social care funding cut if they do not reduce the number of delays in moving people from NHS services to long-term social care. It has naturally upset councils who already do not have enough money for their social care provision as it is, and who complain that some of the fault lies with NHS services.
Many Tory MPs have a great deal of sympathy for their local authorities’ predicament on social care, and are pressing the Treasury for an immediate injection of funding. But there are also Conservatives who are concerned that the manifesto disaster means that their party just won’t touch the longer-term question about the financial sustainability of the sector.
Whitehall sources have been telling me for weeks that they fear that the promised green paper on the matter is going to be very green and very similar to long grass. I now understand that the third meeting of the inter-ministerial group on social care is due shortly. That group will be deciding the scope of that consultation which is indeed likely to be rather green in that it will be open-ended and ask for views from across the sector, rather than making proposals, and it will take time because ministers do not want to trip up on this and damage the foundations for cross-party consensus on the matter.
We are really now back in 2009, when the Tories had turned on Labour over its ‘death tax’ plan for social care funding and everyone was rather bruised about the matter. It will not have escaped your notice that 2009 was a rather long time ago now, and still there is no proposal for reform. What has changed, though, is that the debate has become more bitter and the cross-party consensus needed in order to implement such a big and expensive reform looks even further away.
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