Charity alliance slams Government for withholding financial info on Green Paper

The Care & Support Alliance, a group of charities which have joined forces to protect public interests during the reform of the English social care system, has criticised the Government for withholding financial modelling data that underpins the proposals put forward in July’s Green Paper. With the Big Care Debate on the verge of closure (16 November), the publication of the figures has now been delayed until 2010 – causing concern within the Alliance that the various funding options put forward in the Paper are not actually sustainable. Doubt has also been cast on the reasons given for general taxation being excluded as a means of funding the new ‘National Care Service’. The Care & Support Alliance comments on the delay: ‘How we fund the growing demand for better care is critical to all our futures. But we are expected to decide on funding options without the facts and figures they are presumably based on. Ministers want us to accept the “mathematics” underpinning the Green Paper but don't seem to trust the figures sufficiently to publish them. People rightly want to know how much they may have to pay for care in the future.’ The Alliance now plans to request the financial modelling data through the Freedom of Information system.