Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Whately and Peter Aldous

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

I am not going to pre-empt the publication of targets for the coming year, but, as I have said, we will continue to learn lessons from the progress that we have made this year, including on ambulance response times, which are down by over a third. Anyway, I will take no lessons from Labour, because we know the state of the NHS in Wales.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

3. What progress her Department has made on reforming social care.

[The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)]

We are making great progress on our 10-year vision for adult social care reform. We have introduced the first ever national career structure for care workers, and we have introduced new assessments by the Care Quality Commission, which will shine a light on how well councils are delivering their social care duties.

[Peter Aldous]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that reply. In Suffolk, where the population is increasingly elderly, social care is under enormous pressure, and it is a significant challenge to recruit carers, pay them fairly and provide them with a proper career path. Therefore, I heard what my hon. Friend said, but will she consider commissioning a long-term workforce plan for adult social care equivalent to that for the NHS?

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend is right about the importance of the social care workforce: social care is its workforce. I can assure him that we already have a plan for the care workforce, set out in the “People at the Heart of Care” White Paper, and now we are putting it into practice. Our care workforce pathway is already being implemented, our new accredited qualification for care workers will be launched later this year, and we are backing social care with up to £8.6 billion in extra available funding.