Social Care Funding

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and David Mowat

Monday 12th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat]

I do agree. I had a discussion with the Care Quality Commission on the dataset that is reported, and I hope that over the next months and years we can improve how we do that.

[Dame Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central) (Lab)]

I think that the Minister completely missed the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) from the Front Bench about the unfairness of asking councils to deal with the problem. A 1% rise in council tax in Doncaster raises 21% less than would the same rise in a council in the Prime Minister’s constituency. Does that not mean that the problem is being pushed on to the areas that can least afford it?

[David Mowat]

The right hon. Lady would be right that I had missed the point, had I not said that that issue is addressed by how we distribute the additional better care funding, which uses a formula that takes into account relative need.

NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and David Mowat

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat]

No, I will not. I have only four minutes left, but the hon. Lady, who worked with me on the Public Accounts Committee, can come and see me.

It is also true to say that if we achieve all those things, there will be lower hospital admissions and more humane and timely discharges. That might save money, but it is not being driven by the need to save money. It is driven by care needs because that is the right thing to do.

Let me deal quickly with the STP process. We have been told that it is a secret process and a Trojan horse for privatisation, and we have heard that we are not going to consult. Well, let us talk about consultation first. The right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) made some good points about the difficulties involved in change programmes on which proper consultation does not take place. However, we must have something on which to consult that is reasonably agreed and reasonably stable, because if we do not, we shall give rise to expectations that cannot necessarily be fulfilled—in both directions, positive and negative.

When the STPs come back in October after being signed off, they will be consulted on. A document that will be in the House of Commons Library by the end of the week will describe in detail how all the stakeholders will be consulted and what we will do, but in any event—this point was made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns)—no consultation and no engagement will take away the statutory commitments, the need for configurations to be looked at properly, and the requirement for nothing to proceed that has not been locally agreed.

We were told that the plans were secret. In fact, they were so secret that they were announced in December 2015, in the NHS planning guidelines. They were so secret that 38 Degrees, which was responsible for the principal leak, obtained its information from the websites of the organisations that were keeping it all secret. If we ever do something in secret in future, it really will be done better than this.

The STP process is complex. It will not work equally well in all the locations, and there will be issues to resolve. Some plans, if they are not adequate, will not be proceeded with in the same way as others. I say this to Members, however: we need you to engage with the process—

[Dame Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central) (Lab)]

claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Main Question accordingly put.