Health and Social Care: Winter Update

Lord Laming Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Laming (CB)]

The Minister will be pleased to know that the House was glad that she referred to social care. Every day in the winter there are thousands of patients who no longer need to be in hospital; it is not good for them to remain in hospital, and it is not good for the NHS that they remain in hospital. In addition to the considerations of the social care commission, which will take some time to go through, will it be possible to have a proper endeavour to address these issues before next winter? As the Minister said, there always seems to be a winter crisis now. Would it be possible to get local government and the charities together, but also—and this is not difficult to do—to respect the role of unpaid carers and to provide support for people who are, in effect, taking over the care of patients who would otherwise remain in hospital?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right to remind us of the challenge of having people in the right place, rather than in hospital when they do not need to be there. We have already taken action, so I am pleased to be able to reassure him that, while the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, will look at long-term solutions for social care, she will present a report within a year from her commencement, which will add to the actions that we have already taken.

The noble Lord talked about unpaid carers—and I certainly share the respect that he holds for unpaid carers, so I am very pleased that we have given the biggest boost in income to family carers through eligibility for the carer’s allowance. That has meant an additional —on average, of course—£2,300 a year. That is the biggest boost since carer’s allowance was introduced in the 1970s. We are also legislating for a fair pay agreement, for the first time ever, which will help to tackle the number of vacancies, now standing at 131,000. There will be immediate action, because discharge requires being able to be in the right environment, which might be home but it might need an adaptation. Through the disabled facilities grant there will be a further 7,800 adaptations to homes both this year and next year. So we have taken the immediate action—and, yes, there is a lot more to do.