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Carers

I know that the hon. Gentleman, speaking as a Liberal Democrat, is fully supportive of devolution and of devolving responsibility for resources and decision making to a local level. He will know that the additional £150 million that we have put into PCT budgets, although not ring-fenced, is for the purpose to which he referred. Part of his responsibilities as a local MP, along with those of carers, might be to ensure that the local primary care trust understands the needs of carers, does the job that it should be doing to assess people's needs and ensures that it allocates from its budget the money that the Government have allocated to it to support carers in the area. I hope that he works with local carers to ensure as much—and, indeed, that every Member works with local carers to ensure that local primary care trusts and authorities carry out proper needs assessments and the proper development of programmes and policies to support carers, who do such a fantastic job throughout the country.