Adult Social Care in England

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bakewell]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to respond to today’s Care Quality Commission report on the state of Adult Social Care in England in which it states that “some 1.2 million people are not receiving the help they need, an increase of 18% on last year”.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord O'Shaughnessy) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to improving the quality and availability of adult social care in England. That is why we passed the Care Act in 2014 to provide for the first time a national eligibility threshold for care. It is why we are investing £2 billion more in social care provision over the next three years and have plans to reform how care is funded for the long term.

[Baroness Bakewell]

My Lords, the situation in social care is deteriorating and the Government’s strategy to handle the challenge is inadequate. The situation is getting worse because of the fundamental change in the demographic of this country. Some 15,000 people are now 100 years old, and the size of that cohort is increasing. Surgeries are closing, hospitals are inadequate, and 1.2 million people are unpaid carers and themselves over the age of 65. This calls for a radical, fundamental response, rather than the usual Green Paper and sums of money. That is not enough. This country faces a crisis of demographic change.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I agree in part with what the noble Baroness said in the sense that demographic change represents a big challenge. She mentioned the over-100s. The population of over-85s will double between now and 2037. As the CQC report makes clear, many of those people will have difficulty with the basic behaviours and actions they need to be able to live independently. That is the big challenge that we face. The report provides a very honest exposure of strengths and weaknesses in the current system. The strengths are there, though the noble Baroness perhaps did not give them as much credit as they deserve. The report says:

“Overall, the quality of care remains relatively stable, with the majority of all care rated as good and improvements in some services”.


Indeed, only 1% of services are rated inadequate. Clearly we want that percentage to be zero but it is better than in other sectors. I do not disagree with the noble Baroness about the demographic challenges we face. As I said in my first Answer, we are trying to put more funding in, to recruit more staff and raise quality now that we have this national threshold. We hope to decrease variation and then look for a long-term solution that will solve this problem that we have all been wandering around for the last 20 years.