Health and Social Care

Ed Davey Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend asks the question that everybody wants to be certain of. Absolutely, this is a legally hypothecated levy, but we will ensure that the funds that are fixed for social care go to social care so that we deal with the problem of the catastrophic costs. This will not be dispensed by the NHS, but by the Treasury in the normal course of Government spending.

[Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

I am a carer and I have been a carer for most of my life. Like millions of others caring for their elderly, ill or disabled family members, I have desperately wanted a plan to fix the country’s social care crisis after the Conservatives failed to implement the Lib-Dem plan legislated for in 2014, but this is not that plan. Where is the plan for the care staff to fill the 120,000 vacancies so that there are people to provide the care? Where is the plan for working-age adult care—care for physically and learning-disabled adults, which is the fastest growing care challenge? Where is the plan for the crisis facing millions of unpaid family carers whom the Prime Minister always forgets, and what is his message to the low-paid, the young and the small business owners hit by covid who now face his unfair tax? This Prime Minister has not a clue about fairness and he just does not care.

[The Prime Minister]

After a long career of listening to Liberal Democrat opportunism, I do not think that I have heard anything quite so absurd. The right hon. Gentleman calls for more funding and then attacks the Government for providing the wherewithal to do exactly what he wants. We will be spending half a billion pounds supporting carers, and there will be 700,000 more training places. The plan supports adult care. It supports everybody who needs care up and down the country; it is not just care for the elderly.