Adult Social Care

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I know that the noble Lord is very keen on an independent commission, and he knows my views on that. I do not think we need an independent commission to tell us that social care and health care must be more joined up and integrated; we all know that. We can do that through a major reorganisation from the centre—but we know what big reorganisations do to the health service: they stymie it for years—or we can work locally in the STP and local authority areas to try to drive this at local level, which I think is the right way forward.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, an independent commission on care reported recently. It called for a national care service and for adequate investment in the social infrastructure of care now, not at the end of the Parliament, to give care equal status with the NHS and to prevent us going over the tipping point. The tipping point is here; we cannot wait until the end of the Parliament. Will the Minister and his colleagues take those recommendations seriously and urgently?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

There is no question but that we all recognise the enormous pressures on social care. I cannot comment on what may or may not be in the autumn Statement, but I entirely recognise the pressures to which the noble Baroness draws our attention. As I said, the Government did not have resources available to put money into the NHS and social care at the same time at the beginning of this Parliament because we have to live in the real world, which is very financially constrained. As I said, an extra £1.5 billion is going into the better care fund and an extra £2 billion will be raised by the local authority precept by the end of this Parliament.