Supporting nobody

It’s cynical and a bit cheeky of the ODPM to ask councils to avoid across-the-board cuts (“Supported housing providers fear blanket cuts to funding”, 10 December, page 9).

The ODPM promised that money in year one of Supporting People would match legacy funding yet it made a cut of 2.5% in real terms.

Supporting People teams have been expected to make efficiency savings from the start – before the regime had had time to bed in and before any fair or accurate comparison of value for money could be made between providers. The ODPM knows many authorities will make across-the-board cuts because they do not yet have serious grounds to discriminate between providers.

If the ODPM thinks it can escape the blame for cuts, it is mistaken. I won’t be voting Labour again – and neither will many of the tenants the party hopes to fool by delaying rent restructuring until after the election.

And it’s offering an extra £2m for admin? That, plus the sum soaked up by the new bureaucracy, may well turn out to be more than the money that could be genuinely saved by improving efficiency.

What we are really seeing is cuts to save money for other government priorities.

The performance framework is an excuse, creating the impression that if a service closes it wasn’t really needed or the provider was so inefficient no responsible government could give it funding.

Thanks to the ODPM and Labour, disabled people with support needs will be turned out of inexpensive independent homes into expensive residential care; more women will have nowhere to run when they are abused by their husbands; young offenders will be burgling your home instead of going straight thanks to supported living projects; more people with drug and alcohol problems will clog up the health service and more will die through lack of effective support.

In terms of overall public expenditure, not one penny will be saved. The reverse is likely – someone should do some cost/benefit analysis of Supporting People as soon as possible.

Britain will become a meaner, uglier place where vulnerable, elderly, sick and disabled people are driven into a means-tested underclass. Rather than spend a penny on helping them, the authorities will spend pounds justifying why they can’t.