Social Care: Integrated Care Systems

Lord Allan of Hallam Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Absolutely. It strikes me—again, I mentioned this yesterday—that less than 10% of the 13,000 so-called blocked beds contain people who will need to be in social care full-time in future. Most of them need short-term support and, once they have it, will be able to go back to living in their home, which is the best place for them to be.

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

My Lords, as the Minister has recognised, social care provision is largely in the domain of local authorities. The level of local authority representation on integrated care boards is therefore likely to have an impact on how powerful the social care voice is in integrated care system decision-making. Does the Minister have any information to share with the House about local authority representation across the 42 integrated care boards, including whether it goes beyond the statutory minimum, so that we can understand whether it is sufficient and likely to lead to the step change that I think we all want to see?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

It is, as the noble Lord says, a statutory requirement that the local authorities are represented on the ICBs. In the last few months, I and other Ministers have met and had discussions with all the ICBs. Every ICB is asked to put up a few people. I have had the local authority representative there as one of only three or four people in the meeting—that is key to all of this. They have been critical participants. They are very involved, and it is vital that they remain so.