Government should be ashamed of failure on carers - Local Lib Dems

"Gordon Brown made a grand promise to help people in real need but simply hasn't delivered," says local Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesman Michael Mullaney.

Commenting on research by two of the UK's leading carers' charities, The Princess Royal Trust for Carers and Crossroads Care, which has revealed that up to £40m of the £50m allocated by the Government for carers support is failing to reach the people it was intended for, Michael Mullaney said:

"The Government should be ashamed of its failure to provide the help they promised to carers. I have met many hardworking carers in our area who are in desperate need of this support and ministers chose to wash their hands of this worthy cause as soon as the good headlines had passed. There are estimated to be about 10,000 carers in Hinckley and Bosworth.

"Gordon Brown made a grand promise to help people in real need but simply hasn't delivered. If ministers knew they didn't have the power to actually make this happen then they shouldn't have made such a pledge in the first place.

"When these types of funding problems are exposed ministers always duck responsibility by blaming the decisions on local NHS Trusts. This is yet more evidence of why we need locally elected health boards to make the NHS accountable to the people it serves."