A Plan for the NHS and Social Care

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab) [V]]

As you will be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, this is Dementia Action Week. I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on dementia. In conjunction with the Alzheimer’s Society, we are arguing in the #CureTheCareSystem campaign that there is a desperate need to reform social care. While covid cases are going down in most places in the UK, dementia cases are only going to go up. By 2040, it is estimated that well over 1 million people in the UK will have some form of dementia, with a cost to the economy of £94 billion.

During the pandemic, people with dementia have been the worst affected. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that more than one in four of those who have died from covid also had a diagnosis of dementia, making dementia the most common underlying condition among those who have died from the disease. We know that the number of excess deaths of people with dementia—those not with a covid diagnosis—was about 5,000 higher than in the previous year.

There are a number of reasons for these data. The Government did too little to protect care homes at the height of the pandemic. Hospital patients were quickly moved from hospitals to care homes, all without testing, spreading the virus amongst vulnerable residents. There were also problems in accessing PPE and testing for care staff. Many of us can remember cases of care staff using bin-bags as aprons, or having to make round trips of hundreds of miles to access testing.

The second cause of the excess deaths has been the worsening of people’s conditions, primarily because of the isolation that many have experienced and the lack of ability to use basic skills, such as speech, which they are at risk of losing. For people with dementia living in the community, it is estimated that family and friends have provided an extra 92 million hours of care during the pandemic.

People with dementia and their carers need more than warm words. They need action to address the dementia premium in care home fees. On average, someone living with dementia or their family will pay £100,000 for their care. For them, for their carers, and for the dementia moonshot, we needed much more from the Government in the Queen’s Speech. With the Government’s proposed integration of the NHS and social care in their new Bill, the principle that healthcare and social care should be provided universally and free at the point of need is fundamental. I argue that it should be provided through progressive taxation.

Finally, on health inequalities and the UK’s appalling, high and unequal covid death toll—driven, as Professor Sir Michael Marmot has said, by the key causes of rampant poverty and inequality, a decade of austerity, the underfunding of the NHS and a political culture that fuels division—I repeat my challenge to the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister to adopt Sir Michael’s covid review recommendations and build back fairer.