Government proposals to deal with the care funding crisis in the local government finance settlement by allowing a small increase in council tax will not be nearly enough to plug the gap, and we are very clear that full reform of funding is needed (Council tax rise ‘not enough to fill funding gap in social care’, 16 December).
The 2% increase in council tax this year brought in about £360m nationally, and still leaves a predicted gap of £2.2bn by 2020. This would suggest that council tax would need to increase by about 14% to deal with this problem, ignoring any other inflationary problems faced by any provider of services.
If council tax was a fair tax then this might be acceptable, but council tax is an inherently unfair tax. People who own a small terrace house in Liverpool already pay as much as the owner of a mansion flat in Westminster because of the way that the system works. Poor people pay a much higher proportion of their income in council tax than rich people.
In some parts of the country the needs of the extremely poor will be paid by the relatively poor if council tax is the only route for dealing with this problem. This is why the Liberal Democrats support a root and branch review of the entire funding programme for health and social care.
We need a national debate about these issues if we are to stop such panicked measures like the one the government took in the finance settlement.
Cllr Richard Kemp
LGA Liberal Democrat spokesperson on health and social care
Norman Lamb MP
Liberal Democrat spokesman for health
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