Campaigners threaten FoI to reveal green paper finance data

By Jeremy Dunning on November 4, 2009 in Adults, Social care leaders

A coalition of leading charities is set to issue a freedom of information request to force the government to reveal figures on how much a revamped adult social care system will cost.

This comes after the government announced today that it would not be able to publish the financial modelling underpinning the green paper’s funding options until next year. This was despite care services minister Phil Hope saying last month that he would be “disappointed” if the data were not released in November.

The Care and Support Alliance said the decision has cast doubt on the sustainability of the funding options as well as the reasons given by ministers for not including increased use of taxation as an option for increasing care funding in the future.

The alliance includes such influential bodies as Help the Aged and Age Concern, the Alzheimer’s Society, Carers UK, Counsel and Care, Mencap, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the King’s Fund.

Freedom of information request to be made

It said that having asked for the modelling to be released in July, when the green paper was published, and having received several promises that the information wold be released, it would now have to obtain the material through an FOI.

In a statement it said: “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 and how much it will cost the taxpayer, and they want to know what care they will get in return. These are reasonable questions but we are being denied the information to reach reasonable conclusions on the green paper options.”

The DH said it could not publish the figures because they were incomplete and needed to take account of latest developments.