Department of Health and Social Care and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Debate between Chris Green and Sarah Wollaston(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Dr Wollaston
Indeed; Torbay has led the way. When the Health and Social Care Committee visited Norway and Denmark, we were shown slides from Torbay, because its approach, referring to a Mrs Smith and actually trying to envisage how everything would work around the patient, has been hugely influential abroad as well as at home.
Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)
Health and social care within Greater Manchester has been devolved to the Mayor. Does my hon. Friend agree that Greater Manchester will hopefully lead the way in demonstrating the opportunities presented by combining health and social care?
Dr Wollaston
Yes, and I am going to say more about that, because Manchester has benefited from transformation funding. I want to talk about not only the benefits of integration, but how we can ring fence transformation funding. I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments.
Returning to the recent announcement, a £20.5 billion a year uplift by 2023-24 for NHS England is welcome and represents a 3.4% average increase over five years. Importantly, it is front loaded, with 3.6% in the first two years, and comes on top of £800 million that has already been promised to fund the Agenda for Change pay rises. However, the announcement should not be the end of the story, because it refers only to NHS England and does not include social care, public health, capital or, importantly, training budgets—staffing is crucial to making all this work.
Of course, the Prime Minister acknowledged that and promised to come forward with a settlement for social care and public health in the autumn. However, we need to be clear right from the outset that we must have a social care settlement that reflects demographic changes, because we will need an increase of 3.9% in funding just to stand still. If we want to do something to address quality and to allow social care to do more, we need to go substantially further. That will be essential if we want to get the most out of the settlement that has already been announced for NHS England.
Cycling: Government Investment
Debate between Chris Green and Sarah Wollaston(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Chris Green
I am not sure that I want to comment on Lycra yet, but the health benefits of having an active lifestyle are well recognised.
I am now a member of the all-party cycling group. Its report called for the budget to be increased from its current very low level to a minimum of £10 per head, with the spending then increasing further to £20 per head of the population.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Having been a member of the all-party group, which produced the report on how we “Get Britain Cycling”, I wonder whether my hon. Friend agrees with me, with the report’s findings and with the Select Committee on Health that the benefit of cycling is that active travel is the type of physical activity that people are most likely to sustain throughout their whole lives. We should really focus on that if we really are going to get Britain moving as well as cycling.
Chris Green
I absolutely agree, and this debate is a great opportunity to reinforce that message to the Minister.
The members of the all-party group are not the only ones who want investment at £20 per head; a Sustrans survey suggests that the public want to see investment of £26 per head on an annual basis. More important than pinpointing an exact figure for investment is ensuring that current investment provides good value for money and is adequately utilised by the main practitioner of the funds, which is local authorities. Making cycling ambitions a reality requires collaboration at all levels of government.
The Department for Transport is giving local authorities significant amounts of funding to improve their road infrastructure and to support cycling at a local level. That funding is not ring-fenced and allows local authorities to decide on and implement solutions that best suit their needs. I am pleased that the Government are encouraging all local authorities to have a cycling champion—an official to take cycling development forward in their area and to champion cycling in their area.