NHS: Accident and Emergency Services Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateBaroness Barker
Main Page: Baroness Barker (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Barker's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(9 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his endorsement of the model which my noble friend proposed for GP presence in or alongside A&E departments. I fully agree with him on that. It works well. As regards local authority funding, social care expenditure, in particular, has decreased over the past three years. Obviously that has had an effect on the NHS. It would be idle to pretend that it has not. However he will know the very constrained funding environment in which we stand, and I understand that the party opposite has not undertaken to reverse the reductions in funding to local authorities for understandable reasons. That means that we have got to think clever, and one of the initiatives that we are launching next year is the better care fund which will bring together the NHS and social services in a meaningful way. By far the lion’s share of the funding in the better care fund will go to social services.
Since 2010 there has been an average decrease in social care funding in local government of 26%. Are the Government tracking the coincidence of reductions in budgets for things such as continuing care beds and increased attendance at A&E?