Health and Social Care Levy Bill

Anthony Browne Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) for her remarks.

My constituency has a disproportionately older demographic—those who live there are 50% more likely to be over 65 than the national average—but I want to lay to rest the misperception on both sides of the House that social care is simply about the older generation. More than one in three people in the system is under the age of 65, and because younger adults are in the system for longer, spend on them is proportionately greater, so this is not just about a battle of the generations.

I pay tribute to the millions of unpaid carers in society who for years have been papering over the cracks in the system and the capricious nature of continuing healthcare assessments. I have personal experience of some of that as for many years my father was my mother’s unpaid carer and had to deal with that at the sharp end. For that reason, I celebrate the fact that this is a nettle grasped. It is not necessarily the whole solution but it is the start of a package of measures that moves forward a debate that has been stalled for too long. That is one reason why we should all come to the House and use our voice and platform on the hard issues that we face in society.

I applaud the Government on their selection of national insurance, which is the tax with the broadest reach. It is progressive, and that is why so many of our European neighbours have chosen to fund their social systems through similar measures. It is a chimera to think that there is another way—perhaps Opposition Members have been taking medicinal hallucinogenics—because the national insurance take is more than 10 times that of capital gains tax and inheritance tax combined. No mythical tax on wealth will give us anything like what we need to take this issue seriously—and we should take it seriously.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is the height of political cynicism for Opposition parties to campaign repeatedly to increase taxes to spend money on health and social care and then, when the Government introduce such measures, oppose them? Does he think that they should commit themselves to scrapping the health and social care levy once it is introduced?

[Andrew Griffith]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes an important point. We should be on a quest for consensus, and it would be useful to hear more from Opposition Members in the wind-ups.

I pay tribute to the many dedicated workers in care homes across my constituency as well as their residents—from Barlavington Manor in the north to Valerie Manor in the south and from Villa Adastra in the east to Westergate House in the west. They are just four of the 28 care homes in my constituency providing fantastic quality care. It would be lovely to see more resources pumped into them as well as their staff.

Let me conclude broadly where I started. This is a down payment on a process of reform in our healthcare systems, building on the innovation that we have seen. However, a health and social care system cannot be managed permanently on an exceptions basis. We need reorganisation, better data and better decision making to build the high-quality health and social care system that both sides of the House want to see.