Adult Social Care

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, if the Government are moving in the right direction, why have they yet again delayed the implementation of the Dilnot report? Why have they taken no notice of the report from the Select Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, in 2019, which clearly gave the Government the route forward to deal with this perennial problem?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

Answer.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

It is lovely to have noble friends.

Given the conversations I am sure we will come to shortly about improving hospital flow and the 13% of beds that are blocked, we felt that the focus needed to be very much on providing beds for short-term care. That is where we wanted to put the £7.5 billion of extra funding. We thought that was the immediate priority because we knew the flow issues were impacting A&E, ambulance wait times and everything else. That is not to say that we do not intend to implement all the Dilnot reforms, but the priorities were very much around improving flow and discharge.

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[Lord Bradley (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

This side!

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[Lord Markham (Con)]

Again, we welcome the report and many aspects of it. What I and my ministerial colleagues care most about is having the results and the impact. I think—and hope that noble Lords will agree when they see the work that she is doing in this space—that Minister Whately is gripping it and providing results. Let us see how that progresses first, because I think that that will have the impact that we need.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, given that the Government promised that they would fix social care, and given that in the Answer to this Question the Minister said that there were 10 million people affected, is it wise to go into a general election without having done so?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

As ever, I thank my noble friend for his friendly questions. No; we know that this is an area that needs to be addressed, and I think that it is an area that we are addressing. I have been up here for about five months now, and in the time that I have been here, we have announced a £7.5 billion increase in spending over two years, a £700 million discharge fund over this year, and the recruitment of thousands of people every month from overseas. Yes, there is a lot more to be done, but there have been some very solid results in the meantime.