Clause 48 - Exclusion of nursing care from community care services
Health and Social Care Bill
5:00 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I was referring to the Liberal Democrats in England who are exploiting what is going on in Scotland for their own purposes—and I am not necessarily criticising that. I am simply observing what is going on. It is obvious to us all that there has been pressure from Westminster on the Scottish Labour party to fall into line with what the Government are proposing. Ministers face a real dilemma. If Labour Ministers in London dictate the Scottish agenda, then devolution will be shown to be a sham. However, if the Scottish people are to receive materially different levels of benefit from the state, that presents a different problem for the Government. It raises a different question. The question that it raises in my mind is for how long the people of England and Wales will accept such a solution, because the arrangements for financing the block grant to Scotland have always been based on the assumption that there is a need to make fiscal transfers between regions of the United Kingdom—and now between different countries—in order to address different levels of economic deprivation. In other words, it is a a balancing exercise. People will view that in one light. However, when they see fiscal transfers being made and taxes being set in one country in order to transfer public funding to another country, not to make up for economic deprivation or to balance the situation, but to ensure that people in one country can enjoy a higher standard of public services than people in another country—I suspect that there will be some backlash and some questioning as to whether that is an appropriate way to proceed.
Let me remind members of the Committee of the context in which the debate about devolution and personal and nursing care expenditure is conducted. Health service spending per capita is 20 per cent. higher in Scotland than in England. I have repeated that figure ad nauseam, because it alarms me. It explains why it is affordable in Edinburgh to take some of the actions that the Scottish Executive are considering, and that the Liberal Democrats are pressing them to take. If we had 20 per cent. higher health spending per capita in England, there would be all sorts of options.