Some months ago I joined a PRTC hosted chat, which Stephen O’Brien attended.Afterwards several emails were exchanged with him, and just this morning received another reply. At same time I was thinking of questions to submit to him via PRTC.
So, in his email this morning he says….
we would have ruled out the proposal to fund social care reform through taxation on the same grounds as the Government did in their Green Paper. The Government rightly asserted that this option placed too heavy a burden on those of a working age to be feasible.
Our policy on Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance is that we will oppose the Government’s threat to cut and redistribute Attendance Allowance and DLA for over 65s. We believe that these benefits represent an important step towards enhancing personalised and flexible care that is entirely within the control of individuals and their carers.
Taking the above into account I sent the following to be submitted to him via PRTC..
Hi Stephen, I received a reply from you in which you state your party too would have excluded the proposal of using General taxation to fund social care,and also that as a party you would oppose the removal of AA/DLA from the over 65′s.
My questions…
1. Taking the above into account, just how would your party propose to fund care?
Do you have any other options that you would have brought to the table?
2. Considering Welfare Reform of all benefits,how do you see the future of disability benefits in relation to the new ESA that was brought in. Would your party be proposing to streamline the benefits even more? For example does your party see applicants of DLA eventually moving to ESA wherein relevant top ups were added when necessary?
3. Carers are unique in the service they provide for their loved ones.Something I believe means we should ensure that Carers Allowance remains seperate from the main benefit system and most definitely away from Jobseekers Allowance ( in the future ).
Could you advise how your party would bring about change for carers,not only to the benefit they receive but to the services they need.
4.Assuming no changes are implemented prior to an election, and again assuming your party comes to power, would you continue with the information/responses gathered by the present govt or would you commence the proceedings from the start again.
I know most of this is about benefits and usually we get told it will be passed to the relevant dept for an answer. However, as DWP and Dept of Health ( shadow ministers too )are working extremely closely on all these issues, I think my questions are relevant to you too.
Lets see what answers come back.
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