Adult Social Care

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

Your Lordships’ House will be aware of the financial situation that we inherited and seek to put right. The Government have made available up to £3.7 billion in additional funding for social care authorities in 2025-26, and the noble Baroness is right that just last week the spending review allowed for a further increase of over £4 billion to be made available for adult social care in 2028-29. We are taking a whole range of actions. The Employment Rights Bill, which we will come back to later today, seeks, for the first time ever, to bring in fair pay and professionalisation for those in the adult social care workforce. So it is not that nothing is happening in the meantime. We are making progress and ensuring that the funding will be available so that we have not just a decent adult social care workforce but a way of tackling what no Government have managed to tackle before.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, given the persistent workforce gaps in adult social care over many years, and given the concerns that there are over immigration—even though immigrants often do the work that local people do not want to do—can the Minister outline what plans the Government have, with a clear structure, to make this a more attractive career, particularly to young people in the UK? What are the Government doing in partnership with social care providers, which are stretched at the moment, to look at alternative ways of funding training and skills development and to make sure that this is an attractive career for those in the UK, rather than always having to rely on immigration?