Health and Social Care Levy

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

1st reading
Wednesday 8th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

There is, without doubt, agreement across the House that funding is necessary for health and social care. The challenge is in how we fund that, how we spend it, and how we ensure that the Government are held accountable for their promises. I will not repeat the powerful words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker). They spoke truth to power, and I hope the Government were listening. They raised a second issue—indeed, this has been raised by others: is there a proper plan? We have a document; it is called “the plan”. For me, a plan is something that sets out clearly not just ambition—that is there aplenty—but specifically what will be done, when it will be done by, who will be doing it, and how the Government in this case, and the NHS, will be held accountable. What will be the reporting mechanism? I fear I see none of that. If I am asking taxpayers to pay a very substantial sum, I think that is the least we owe them.

Under this proposal, 80% of the pot will go to the NHS backlog and 20% to social care, which will be split between sorting out the woeful provision that we have now and the cap. I suggest that our priorities here are wrong. Yes, there is a backlog, but social care should not be second class. It should not be dealt with second, after the backlog is fixed; it needs fixing now. To be honest, to talk about fixing the mechanism by which we share the cost between state and individual as the priority seems wrong. If we do not have a social care system that actually delivers, there is nothing to pay for, and there is nothing to debate about how we fund it. I believe that the Government must change that priority.

What, then, could the Government do? With regard to the backlog, they could look not just at longer-term plans—we do not have time for that when it comes to recruitment—but at how we are going to get retired doctors and overseas-qualified doctors back. The Government could do that; they could change the bureaucracy that stopped that happening during the pandemic. They could look at how we can change the way we work flexibly across the different specialisms. That can be done, it has to be done, and it should be the focus.

The Government will not like this, but we also need to look at the immigration rules. I know that there are already exemptions for highly skilled doctors and nurses, but we need more than that across the whole health sector, and that help will come only through immigration. What about targets? Constituents deserve to have specific targets set. We need to know how those are going to be triaged according to need, as I assume they will be, and how they will be reported on.

Then we have social care—what are we going to do there? Can we really afford to wait for a White Paper? No, I do not think we can, but what could we do? We could legislate now. We could mandate proper pay—pay that is fair for the quality of work and the professionalism provided. We could develop a proper, professional system. We could fund local government properly. We could police the quality of the commissioning, as we might under the new Health and Care Bill, which is going through Parliament. Again, we could change the immigration rules, and we could also look at properly supporting carers who are looking after relatives at home, removing extra burden on the NHS.

All this is possible, but without a plan and without accountability, how can we look the taxpayer in the eye and say, “If you pay, we will deliver”?