Health and Social Care

Lord Warner Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I reassure my noble friend that he is quite right to point out the benefits that attend to a cap. The intention is to consult on both the floor and the cap.

[Lord Warner (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the Dilnot commission but I will not actually go down that territory. Are the Minister and his department aware that over the last three or four years there has been a considerable surge out of publicly funded social care by all providers, particularly nursing homes? What risk assessment has his department made of the implications of that, particularly for the NHS?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The CQC report, which I am sure the noble Lord has looked at, talks about agencies and indeed nursing home providers deregistering. It also talks about the ones that are registering. There is a fairly consistent turnover in the number of those, so it is about balance. There is a similar number of providers within the market—again, with slightly fewer residential nursing and slightly more domiciliary to reflect the kind of balances of care that we have discussed.