National Health Service Commissioning Board and Clinical Commissioning Groups (Responsibilities and Standing Rules) (Amendment) Regulations 2020

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker (LD) [V]]

My Lords, these fees are a perfect encapsulation of the disparity between health and social care. Prior to the emergence of Covid, the social care sector was in crisis. Since 2010, local government finance has reduced by 50%, but statutory responsibilities have not. Local authorities have had staff reductions, to the point where there are senior directors, front-line staff and very few people in between.

On 25 February, the Department of Health and Social Care guidance told local authorities:

“It remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected … There is no need to do anything differently in any care setting at present.”


On 14 May, the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, stated that

“right from the start we have tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes.”

The public response was incredulity, because by that time there had been 10,000 deaths in care homes in England and Wales, according to the ONS—a quarter of all deaths. I repeat the statement from Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, who asked to

“see the evidence of what exactly the protective ring consists… and when exactly they instituted this protective ring”,

asked why

“we had our PPE distribution networks disrupted to send things to the NHS”

and

“why we had our primary care support withdrawn from many care homes?”

Why are they still waiting for it?

On 18 May, in their Covid recovery strategy, Our Plan to Rebuild, the Government pulled another fast trick. On clinical support, the strategy states that

“the Government is accelerating the introduction of a new service of enhanced health support in care homes from GPs and community health services, including making sure every care home has a named clinician to support the clinical needs of their residents by 15 May.”

But that should have been happening already under various pieces of legislation. In truth, the NHS abandoned care homes at their point of greatest need. Nevertheless, I ask the Minister: what progress has there been towards that 15 May deadline?

It is time for the Government to stop announcing new responsibilities for local government and start listening to local authorities about what they need central government and the NHS to do, so that there can be a joint strategy to manage Covid and its lasting impact on communities. Inadequate testing, little tracking and no isolation means that care homes will not be ready to withstand a second spike. They simply will not be able to provide what these older people desperately need.