Adult Social Care Services

Lord Warner Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I reiterate the point I made to the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler. I completely agree that safety is paramount: it is the beginning of any good care setting. As I said, the new regime highlights issues of safety where they exist so that operators and commissioners, whether that is local authorities or whoever, can demand turnaround in those services. As I said, the response to that has been demonstrated.

I mentioned that more staff are, of course, getting the national living wage, which will continue to attract people to the sector. The noble Baroness is quite right about skills, which is why we have the skills for care programme.

It is also worth pointing out that one thing the CQC report did show, as indeed you would hope it would, is that 79% of settings provided either good or outstanding care. There is no doubting the motivations of the people who work in this sector, and we all pay tribute to them. It is about making sure that there are enough of them and that they are properly skilled. That is precisely why we have put additional money into social funding, to enable real-term increases over the next three years to address the fact that we have an ageing and growing population.

[Lord Warner (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the Dilnot commission. I am sure we all welcome the idea of a longer-term set of proposals for consideration later. However, does the Minister not realise that the money the Government have said they are putting in over the next three years, including the current year, merely puts back a lot of the money that was taken out before, and certainly does not meet the proposal for immediate funding made by your Lordships’ Select Committee on the sustainability of the NHS and by the King’s Fund? This year, the Government are about £1.5 billion to £2 billion short to meet the needs. Does the Minister understand that this is not just about quality but about quantity? People working in publically funded care are leaving in droves. Is this on the Department of Health’s risk register? What are the Government going to do if the tipping point is reached on providers not providing publically funded social care?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

First, I congratulate the noble Lord on the work he did on the Dilnot commission in setting out the challenges we face and the kinds of solutions that we need to put the sector on a long-term footing. I merely reiterate the point that extra funding is going in, at a time when we are still addressing the £150 billion deficit that the Government inherited in 2010. That is enabling real-terms increases. Of course we need to keep going with that, because there are more older people and their care is increasingly complex.

I want to come back to the changes we are making on delayed transfers of care. Making sure that the interface between the NHS and social care is as quick, smooth and suitable for patients as possible is critical. That is why there is renewed emphasis to make sure that the money going in is addressing one of the major problems that is preventing the quality of care that we want.