Speaking to Public Finance, Burstow said the Spending Review, which will set out departmental budgets for 2015/16, needed to maintain cash transfers from the NHS to councils to boost social care funding.
In 2013/14, around £859m was transferred from the NHS to fund social care in local authorities.
However, Burstow said it was also vital that the review ‘send a clear signal that the government does understand – and will settle in the 2015 Spending Review – that funding for social care has very much been the poor relation of the NHS for decades’.
Burstow, who chaired the joint committee that undertook pre-legislative scrutiny of the Care Bill, said there was evidence that funding problems in the system were ‘chronic’. He added: ‘I hope that will be addressed, because if it isn’t, you just wind up with costs being shunted into the NHS.’
He also said there was a need for Chancellor George Osborne to provide ‘transition’ funding to local authorities ahead of the cap on adult social care costs, to be set at £72,000 in 2016.
Around 450,000 people who are currently paying for all of their social care will need to be assessed before being included in the council-run payment systems to calculate contributions to the cap.
