National Health Service Commissioning Board and Clinical Commissioning Groups (Responsibilities and Standing Rules) (Amendment) Regulations 2020

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for tabling this Motion. Covid is a callous killer for which we currently have no cure. I take a moment to offer condolences to the families and friends of all those cruelly taken from us before their time and offer a large salute and enduring debt of gratitude to all our care and front-line workers in health, supermarkets and across the piece. We owe them an enduring debt of gratitude.

Has the Covid crisis revealed the issues there are with the current CCG structure? Does my noble friend the Minister believe it is time to review the whole nature of CCGs and commissioning within health and social care, with everything possible for review laid out on the table? Does he agree that our right honourable friend Jeremy Hunt did a great service to the nation in bringing health and social care together in one department? Does he also agree that it is a pity our right honourable friend Jeremy Hunt ran out of time in getting that resource to deliver some sense of parity for social care, alongside health?

In 2017 the former Prime Minister, Theresa May, laid out in the Conservative manifesto a plan for social care. It was roundly rejected by the electorate. Was she politically naive? I do not think so—she was clear, upfront and honest. The fact of that rejection should be considered by everybody, because it leaves us in the situation we are still in, as has been said by previous speakers, years after the Dilnot review. When is the Green Paper likely to be published? How do we get to a position in which we can have that parity between health and social care across the country?