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National Minimum Wage: Care Sector

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing the debate. One of the tricks that the Government have pulled is to shove the responsibility for social care on to local authorities. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but what the Government have not done is to give them the resources to do it—they have given them about 2%. Three or four years down the road, we will reach a point when the Government come back and want to cap the local authorities, because they are spending too much—that is what the Government will say. We have had all that before. The other thing we should bear in mind is that at the moment local government is badly funded, to say the least.