Lord Lansley
Main Page: Lord Lansley (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Lansley's debates with the Leader of the House
(2 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberThis has been an intractable issue. If all parties had managed to deal with it better, people in the situation the noble Lord mentioned—for whom we have a lot of sympathy—would have been helped. Unfortunately, that is not the case. We have announced a package that will begin with the new cap in October 2023.
My Lords, I very much welcome the additional resources for the NHS and social care, but will the Government increase and accelerate the resources for social care? Everyone in the NHS knows that only by increasing the capacity in local authority-funded social care can they relieve the pressures on the NHS. The House will recall that we legislated in the Care Act 2014 for a Dilnot-style plan. It is now more than 10 years since he submitted that plan to me as Secretary of State. We should bring it into force, and we can and should do so by April 2022.
I am afraid I have already set out the timescale on which we are doing this. This is a complex area and, as I said, the new cap will come in in October 2023. As I said, the funding in this package covers the cost to local government of implementing the charging reforms, including the cap, the increased capital limit moving towards paying a fair rate for care and the associated implementation costs. We will be working closely with local authorities to make sure that we can implement this to the benefit of all our citizens.