Care Homes: Staffing

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

That is absolutely right. In our weekly meetings as Ministers, we look at the reason for the delays in terms of the 13,000 beds. That assessment of delay is one of the key criteria that we monitor each week. The best ICBs that I have seen have teams on this—they are absolutely SWAT teams—who make sure that they do it, and measure the time in which they can do it; for example, they have got to have that assessment within 24 hours. When the patient goes in, they have an estimate of the day that they are leaving, which they will target and work towards. The best do that, and the task force is set up to make sure that it is rolled out to all the other places.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, the question has been put to the Minister already, but I want to put it again. Has he read the report of the Adult Social Care Select Committee, published in December, which has a raft of challenges and very good ideas on social care? I look forward to discussing it with the Minister. Specifically, does he agree that as long as we characterise adult social care workers as unskilled and pay them, quite often, below the minimum wage, we are never going to build the capacity that we need? That is a huge challenge. If he were to read the report, he would find that what we recommend is so evidently simple: we need a national workforce plan for adult social care, to raise standards, incentives, status and pay.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness. I think that the House will recall that I have mentioned on a number of occasions that this is a critical part of the workforce plan. What has become clear, even in the short time that I have been at this box, is that social care is a vital cog in the whole chain, so to speak, which goes right back to ambulance wait times and A&E, because if we do not get the flow going out of the system, we have got problems there. So I can assure the noble Baroness that it is key to my thinking, and to all our thinking.