NHS: Long-term Strategy

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

As so often, my right hon. Friend raises an extremely important point about how we best use the resources and significant investment being put into the NHS. He will recognise that a key part of delivering value for money is looking at the interfaces on the patient pathway through the healthcare system. Handover points are often when we have the most difficulty.

I am sure my right hon. Friend will welcome that I recently visited Maidstone to see how we track the patient journey through a hospital and into care—residential care or domiciliary care. We are putting control centres in place through the 42 ICBs, and our reforms are bringing health and social care closer together. An area of common ground across the House is on the need to bring social care and healthcare closer together, and the ICBs, which were operationalised from July 2022, are a key part of that.

I suspect that one issue on which my right hon. Friend and I strongly agree is that it has to be underscored by data, so that we can see where the blockages are and prioritise the use of technology, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, virtual wards and other innovations.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Steve Barclay]

I am being pretty reasonable on interventions, so if the hon. Gentleman will give me a moment.

[Clive Efford]

rose—

[Steve Barclay]

The Opposition want to hear what the Government are doing, and then they tell me that they do not want to hear.

[Clive Efford]

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services surveyed English local authorities back in 2019, and it found that they had endured cuts of £6.3 billion in adult social care, resulting in a drop since 2014 of 425,000 beds. How much does the Secretary of State think that has contributed to today’s crisis?

[Steve Barclay]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman raises the additional funding that the Government are putting into social care. In his autumn statement, the Chancellor made the biggest social care spending increase of any Government in history: an extra £2.8 billion next year and £4.7 billion the year after. That is £7.5 billion over two years, on top of the £6.6 billion he put into the NHS over two years. At a time when, as a consequence of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, inflation is extremely high and there are acute cost of living pressures for constituents across the country, the Chancellor prioritised spending not just on health but, as the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) helpfully highlighted, on social care. Bringing health and social care together is exactly what I set out in my statement to the House on Monday.