Health minister Norman Lamb has accused council commissioners of ‘sometimes being lazy’ in their treatment of people with learning disabilities.
Mr Lamb said it was a ‘scandal’ that some people with learning disabilities were cared for ‘hundreds of miles from home’.
Speaking in the House of Commons, he said: ‘I have described the task of changing the behaviour of commissioners with regard to people with learning disabilities as like wading through treacle backwards.
‘This is not about money because we have spent enormous sums of public money on putting people in inappropriate care.
‘This is therefore not about the Government being mean with public money.
‘In my view, it is about commissioners at a local level sometimes being lazy and not taking proper account of the rights of people with learning disabilities to lead as good a life as they can.
‘Instead, sometimes they are shoving them away hundreds of miles from home and forgetting about them.
‘That scandal has to end.
‘However much pressure we have to keep applying to commissioners to change their habits we will apply it.’
