Social Care: Green Paper

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Wheeler]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the costs and effects of the delay in publishing their green paper on social care.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford) (Con)]

My Lords, the Green Paper remains a priority for the Government, and we will publish it at the earliest opportunity. Despite the delay in publication, the Government are committed to improving adult social care. We recently launched our social care recruitment campaign, Every Day is Different, and continue to support the sector by distributing £12 million a year through the workforce development fund. The Government have also given councils access to up to £3.9 billion of funding for social care for 2019-20.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, the Green Paper was first promised in 2017, when the Government said that,

“we cannot wait any longer—we need to get on with this”,—[Official Report, 6/7/17; col. 987.]

and pledged to publish by the end of that year. I remind the House that this was a year after they abandoned the Dilnot provisions on future care funding, which had cross-party support under the Care Act and were due to start in 2016. The Alzheimer’s Society has estimated that, over the past 26 months, there have been more than half a million delayed transfers of care for people affected by dementia; nearly 3 billion hours of unpaid care have been provided; and, at any one point, more than 120,000 people with dementia in England receive no help from social care or family carers. Emergency cash injections do not address the chronic underfunding of local services, change the eligibility criteria or help people plan for future care needs. When we finally get the Green Paper, can the Minister promise the House that it will address these issues and provide the major, immediate and long-term funding that is urgently needed?

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

I thank the noble Baroness for an extremely important question. I know that she will agree that decisions on future reforms must be aligned. That is precisely why the long-term plan and the upcoming social care Green Paper have been considered alongside each other. Some important measures within the long-term plan are already beginning to improve social care; for example, the enhanced health in care homes model, which will ensure stronger links between primary care networks and local care homes; the comprehensive model for personalised care, which will put the individual at the centre of services; and personal health budgets. However, the noble Baroness is also right that we have to make sure that we get funding reform right—that is why we have increased funding from £3.6 billion in 2018-19 to £3.9 billion in 2019-20. She is also right that we must ensure that we build on the carers action plan and put carers at the heart of social care. Finally, we must ensure that we recruit, retain and build on workforce development at the heart of the social care Green Paper. That is what we will do, and I look forward to the debates in this House when we bring it forward.