Health and Social Care: Winter Update

Deirdre Costigan Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I am happy to report that people will not have to wait three years for action on social care. In fact, we have seen lots of it in the last six months. We have had the biggest expansion of carer’s allowance since the 1970s; the legislation for fair pay agreements in the Employment Rights Bill, brought in within the first 100 days of this Government; the uplift in funding provided by the Chancellor through her Budget; and the expansion of the disabled facilities grant. There will be more for us to do this year, including reform to make the better care fund more effective. Baroness Casey’s first report will in fact be next year. It will set out the action required on social care throughout this Parliament. I hope that reassures people right across the House and, more importantly, right across the country that social care is a priority for this Government. We will seek to do better than our predecessors of all parties—I have made this point before—because we have to tackle this generational challenge facing our country.

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

I was shocked when a young man came to my last constituency surgery to ask me as his MP to help him get a GP appointment. Morning after morning, he had spent hours queuing on the phone, and he was desperate. If my constituents cannot see a GP, they end up in A&E instead. How is the Secretary of State continuing to work to undo the Conservatives’ abject failure to fix the GP crisis, which is fuelling winter pressure on hospitals?

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the challenge caused by the Conservatives’ failure on general practice, which has placed pressure not just on stretched GPs, of whom there were thousands fewer when the Conservatives left office than in 2015, but on other parts of the system. That is not just worse for patients—it is certainly not a pleasant experience at the moment to be sat waiting in A&E for treatment—but more expensive for the taxpayer, because while it costs £40 for a doctor’s appointment, it can cost £400 for accident and emergency attendance. That is the legacy of the Conservative Government: things are worse for patients and more expensive for taxpayers. That is the rotten legacy that we are seeking to overturn.