Pensions Triple Lock

Johanna Baxter Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pat McFadden]

Let me thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He is right to point out the deficiencies and worse that exist in the current care system, and an under-discussed part of it all is the pressure it puts on the NHS. As I said in my statement, if we turn away from this and do not tackle the kind of things my hon. Friend spoke about, we will have more A&E admissions, more ambulance callouts, and more elderly people kept in hospital when they would be better off in a social care setting.

[Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

The SNP wasted more than £28 million of taxpayers’ money on social care plans that went nowhere: no improvement to outcomes, no improvement to the terms and conditions of social care workers in Scotland. Now, the SNP is trying to hoodwink my constituents by telling them that these plans would make them worse off. The plans would increase Barnett consequentials for Scotland, which could be spent on a national care service. Will the Secretary of State learn from the SNP’s failures and reassure my constituents?

[Pat McFadden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to stress the importance of the social care workforce. That is why we are not waiting until April 2030 to make improvements for the social care workforce. She is also right to say that as a result of the changes that I have spoken about in my statement, extra funding will be available to the Scottish Government, in addition to the record financial settlement they have already received since the general election. Were we in a different environment, we could have a constructive discussion with the Scottish Government about how to build the best social care system throughout the UK. Instead, we have the usual claims of perfection, which my hon. Friend knows are not the experience of her constituents.