National Care Service

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend rightly raises a really important issue. We cannot think about the welfare of people who are receiving care if we are not thinking about the welfare of people caring for them. That is why we are going to appoint a champion for unpaid carers, who can be their voice as we build the new national care service, to ensure that all the issues he rightly raises are considered in this process.

[Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)]

I think most of us or our friends and family will be familiar with the really personal, emotional, financial and, frankly, human cost of our broken system. It is a cost resulting from successive generations of politicians’ failure to face into the difficult choices and act, and I hold my own party as accountable as any other in that. I thank the Minister and the Prime Minister for not just stepping up on this but facing into some of the difficult choices, including the triple lock adjustment, that will be needed to fund it. My constituents tell me they will be perfectly happy to pay more and to make sacrifices if they can be confident they will be getting the care they need when they grow older. Will the Minister assure my constituents that, over the next Parliament, every penny we are saving through that triple lock adjustment will be invested in ensuring that we have the care service my constituents deserve?

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for an insightful and important question and for the work he does to ensure that his constituents’ views are put forward here. What matters in order to fulfil the test that he sets for the national care service is to be really clear on outcomes. A number of Members have mentioned the travesty of people staying in hospital longer than they need to, and how traumatic it is when we experience a loved one not being cared for in the way that we would wish towards the end of their life. We all have to be clear about the outcomes that we want to see from this new service, and then we will be able to meet the test his constituents set.