27/05/2012 Sunday Politics South East

And in the South East. Of should more of us be looking after our

loved ones at home, as Kent County Council says it must spend less on

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 1680 seconds

Coming up. What are companies are urged to trade with each other.

What difference will it make when there were up -- when the ones that

are sharing are all in drought? Joining the with there should bots

are the Minister for Energy and climate change Greg Barker, he is

the Conservative MP for Bexhill and Battle and the former MP for

Gillingham and Rainham, Paul Clark. Let us start in East Sussex, which

could still -- soup could soon get a new listing to celebrate its

environments. They will be at the heart in -- they will be at the

heart of the first biosphere reserve created an irritant for the

last 35 years. This status has already gone to places like the

Amazon rainforest, Paris, an illustrious list. His East Sussex

right to try and get in and it? think they deserve the recognition.

I grew up on the foot of the South Downs and so it is a very special

place for me. It is somewhere that people come from round the world to

see, so I would love to see proper recognition. Should Kent be trying

to get in on the act? I certainly think that we have the North Downs

and to a whole range of sides. I think this is important because

this is focusing attention on the importance of our environment, that

we needed to be careful of. We will keep an eye on this one. We will

see how much money it brings in. Should more of us be looking after

our loved ones at home? Kent County Council plans to cut the cost of

adult social care, especially care homes, which cost �162 million a

year. It is clear that they want more of us to be looked after in

our own homes. -- in our own homes. Old people in Kent are being

promised a better service for less money. Is that really true?

Keen artist party could have stayed in her house, but she opted to live

here in a Tunbridge Wells care home. She is 99 years old and enjoys

being looked after. I loved this special praise for drawing. I could

do this all day. Not having to get meals is lovely. You just go up

there and your meal is ready for you. It is absolute bliss. It is

nice to have company when you wanted. I go up and sit in the

sitting room with the others. Kent County Council is changing its

approach to adult social care with what it is calling a transformation

programme. As part of that, residential care homes could become

scarce. Kent County Council needs to make �200 million of budget cuts

by 2015. One of the key areas it is targeting his adult social care

spending. At the moment, a lot -- Al app proportion of that goes on

Cameron's. The council spends three had and �52 million via an adult

social care. The plans outlined a shift from

residential care with paid staff to encourage people to stay in their

homes cared for by unpaid friends and family. The way that it would

appear is to keep people out in the communities, being looked after by

families and carers as much as possible. Relying on the local

community and family. Putting more pressure on families. There are a

lot of people who need to come into care because they are lonely and

because the demographics of how we live, families are not always

living close by, so they go days without seeing someone. The council

says that encouraging people to stay in their homes will preserve

independence. Ron Edwards looks after his wife, who has dementia.

He is her for it -- her full-time care and this is how he spends her

day. I can hardly leave the room without her calling out to me, so I

am really sitting here as you see now and she is sitting where she is

sitting now, and that is how she spends her day, looking at me.

couple get regular visits from care workers, like Mandy who works for a

charitable organisation. A nice bit of cake care. Ron says having help

is essential. You have got to. My next-door neighbour is important.

The charitable organisations are important. I could not do it

without them. There is one in particular I could not do without.

I do not know how one would manage. In order for people to stay in

their homes, they might need to be many more carers like Mandy to

provide support. Some say there will be no option but to use agency

staff, who come at a premium and therefore might cost more. The key

agencies will charge a fee. We have come across occasions when they are

paying the agency twice of the cost provided to the individual quirk --

client. It is one of that worries we have about the whole

transformation process. We do not know either of whether the capacity

for care workers is there or whether the savings will be

achieved. We had a parallel when the Government broke up the mental

hospitals and provided for people to be living at home. It was

thought that would be a cheaper option, in fact it turned out to be

more expensive. The over 65 population is steadily increasing.

How Kent County Council treats those who need care is going to

become more important than ever. But is moving away from care homes

and placing more responsibility on adults and their families the right

approach? Joining us now from a Westminster

studio is Graham Gibbens. Graham is the Cabinet member for adult social

care in Kent. Thank you for being with us. It sounds like there is a

shift in responsibility from you as a county council to us as

individuals to look after individuals in their own homes.

issue is that we're looking forward over the next 20 to 30 years and

the number of people over 65 is going to increase by about 55 %.

This means that we need to look at how we're going to care and support

this increasing number of people. There is no intention that

residential care homes will cease, up what we are looking at is how we

can help people remain independent for as long as possible. Over a

number of years, the consistent thing that people have said is that

they would like to stay independent for as long as possible. This means

of course providing the right support to those people. Let me

pick up on that. Support is crucial. I appreciate what you're saying.

And sure there are lots of people sitting at home saying they would

rather be at home than in a care home, but those carers need help. I

have spoken to carers who are suicidal. Carers who have become

reliant on Apple. People in their forties who have no life on their

own -- of their own. -- alcohol. The cares and these individuals

need to know that you are going to look after them if there are not

going to be places in care homes. am not saying there will not be

places in care homes. I want to stress that we need to be looking

at how we support carers more carefully and more strongly. I

wanted to go on record now as saying I have a great debt of

gratitude to the carers who care for other people in our community.

It took a brilliant job and we need to think about how to support

people to care for people more. not ask the questions, and saw

them! Up we needed to be putting in place measures to ensure that the

right sort of care is provided to enable carers to go on having their

own activities so that they can stay healthy. In your report, you

talk about fallen pit -- volunteers. Presumably, various charities. The

offer respite yet -- respite care for carers. They say that their

funding is at risk from the beginning of the next financial

year. I would say to all those organisations that I firmly believe

that coming out of this programme we will be using an supporting a

volunteer are bright -- volunteer organisations a lot more than we do

now, because I really understand and appreciate the contribution

that we make -- that they make. can we support them when they do

not have enough money to survive? That is why we're doing this

transformation programmes. We need to look at all the services we

provide and how we can do them more effectively. We need to sure that

we do not have duplication of services and that we can support

the voluntary sector, support carers, the voluntary sector can

play a big part in helping carers do the job. How can we make that

happen? How much do you plan to save from you but it? I cannot say.

We are being really responsible by saying we're going to look at all

the services we provide and look at them all and see how we can do them

more efficiently. That means looking at working with health

colics. How can we ensure that we are really making a care for people

taking place in the Community's? How can we work with the

commissioning groups to ensure that we are making sure that people are

being provided for in their community? I would like to bring in

our guests. Greg Barker, could you do what Ron Edwards does? Every

time I see appear like Ron, it is extraordinary what they go through.

Who knows which of us would really be up to that job. It is a roll the

dice who that could be. It could happen to any of us and hopefully

it will not. One of my closest family members was heroic in the

way that she looked after my uncle. He had a very debilitating illness

and for many years at home she looked after him until he had to go

into full-time residential care. But many of us are growing older

and being healthier for longer. It was wonderful to see Patti there at

99 drawing and having a lovely quality of life and love in her

care homes. But I think that most people if they are fit and healthy,

they want to put off until the last minutes the point at which they

going to appear once. The idea that happiness is a council-run care

home in your own age is from another year. People want support

and choice at it is about pink -- putting people first at the heart

of these policies. Paul Clark, it is going to be hard to save money

and offer a better service. Is it impossible? There is always room

for improvement in the spending of any budget, what ever state you're

at, so I recognise that but I have to say that with the increasing

number of people of 65 and beyond, we are living healthier, but there

will be demands. The increasing population, this is the cost. This

will be a bigger issue than the financial crisis. You can only

afford what you can afford. You have to get the very best value for

money. 90 % of the money that Kent County Council spends on adult

social care is already outsourced to the private sector. It does ask

the question, whether you can get more out of that given pound. There

will be some improvement possible, but it will not meet the

requirements. The next stage of the transformation is in a few weeks'

time. Blazing sunshine, preceded by weeks

of pouring rain. The British weather is certainly living up to

its celebrated vagaries. We are still officially in drought in the

South East. OFWAT published a report this month saying that water

sharing is the way forward. I do not mean having a bath together.

This is a water share on a much bigger scale. Currently 95 % of

water in the South East is moved around in this way, but is that

enough to make a difference? When they're all endowed, that cannot be

enough to make a difference. In the are all injured, it will be very

difficult. But there is a lot we can do. Not just for now, but there

is a lot we can do in the longer term. People often ask me why we

cannot just pipe down all that water that we know is up and the

north, where it is plentiful, bring it to the south? Of course,

technically that is possible, but it would be hugely expensive to

create a sort of National Grid for water. That would mean that

people's water bills would go up very substantially. What we can do

much more effectively and much more cheaply, so we do not put up

people's utility bills, is get greater Connectivity between

regions. Are you talking about pipes between? Water flows. Making

sure that where there is a natural water-based that we do not -- that

we do make sure that the flow into each other. So that there is

greater connectivity between our canals, rivers, our reservoirs are

more joined-up and so that we do not see each water authority as a

little island on its own. To an extent, that is how it is at the

moment and that is how it has always been. We need them all to

come together at much more coherently. It is a big issue at

the moment. But died really happens more than once a decade. Do you

think that people would be prepared to pay more? -- drought rarely

happens more than once a decade. think we need to do things like

reduce leakage and improve systems in that way. OFWAT has some

leverage there to improve internal Likud. Everyone who is watching

this programme, or we all have to recognise that water is not going

to be there on tap as it has been so we do need to do that. There are

some other things. I know that some of the farming lobby used a lot of

water in what they have -- and what they're saying is give us

permission to have on farm reservoirs that would not take

water from the general supply. All those sort of things. But the

planning requirements are cumbersome. What about incentives?

At the moment are there enough incentives for the water companies

to trade? Because there are incentives to drill holes and build

reservoirs. It is not so much to trade it, it is about having

greater connectivity between the two. Paul is right. There is a lot

we can do about saving water at home. Is it really necessary to

wash our clothes, are dishwasher and flush the loo with drinking

water? So we have grey water? last house I had a rainwater

harvester in that is what I used to water the garden with. Even for

using your house pipe in the garden, when there is not a ban, we're

doing it with drinking quality water. It makes you sound much more

a man of the people than the ministers who have sprung dance for

it at home. Let us take a round-up of the

There was an angry reaction from motorists as the Government

announced it is increasing tolls at the Dartford crossing by her third

in October and again two years later.

The work and Pensions Secretary Ian Duncan Smith went to a conference

at Maidstone. Youth unemployment in Kent has

doubled. The whole of and Portslade MPs

thought back up from the Prime Minister in the number of -- on the

number of spotters ticking up residency in his constituency.

think it is important that homeowners have protection against

people stealing their property. And Tory MPs are usually told the

Government line but the Member for Hastings and Rye and South Thanet

joined more than two dozen MPs in a cross-party revolt against the

Chancellor's plans to oppose the peak -- VAT on started caravans.

They are not thinking of the next holiday, they say it will lead to

thousands of job losses. Let us pick up on the Dartford

tolls. People feel really betrayed on this one. As a former Kent ten p,

under Labour we were told to that of the crossing would be free. And

yet, at the toll was kept. That is a betrayal. What we said was that

by 2003 the cost would be paid for. Clearly there were maintenance

charges that carry on but what we introduced was a charge because of

congestion. I know he will find this difficult, but I can tell you

that all the modelling showed that there would be a seven % increase

in the levels of traffic there have the tools disappeared. That is an

issue. But people are going to be paying �25 now it every week to go

to work. You can buy attack, but what is interesting is that there

is a 50p increase that is happening immediately for nothing in return,

the 50p increase that happened back in 2008 was the first in years. But

there is going to be a 50p increase this year for nothing in return but

interestingly does two p in advance are also going to have a 33 %

increase, which we did not introduce. Is this something your

constituents come to you about? Absolutely. It always seems bizarre

to people that their home can be invaded, that they can effectively

have their home invaded and find themselves powerless. Whether it is