Social Care

Lord Patel Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Baroness raises two interesting points. There is a recruitment and a training issue involved in many care homes. This is being addressed by the Government in two ways: first, by raising the minimum wage to the national living wage so that it rises to about £9 an hour by 2020; and, secondly, by the introduction of the care certificate which came out of the Camilla Cavendish report after Mid Staffs, which should improve training in the sector. The funding of local authority-provided care is the issue on which we are awaiting the outcome of the spending round discussions.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that the pressures mounting across the whole range of healthcare, from prevention to primary care, acute care and social care, will just keep getting worse until we address the fundamental issue of adequate resourcing of all the aspects of healthcare? Is it not time to start the debate more widely as to how we are going to do that?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments and, of course, I understand exactly what he is saying. I will put just two points. First, the fundamental problem is that the Government still have a very high level of public borrowing, which we inherited and has been there—