Disabled People: Social Care

Lord Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I do not want to disappoint the noble Baroness, but she is aware that more money is going in. To address the specific issue that she talks about—and I obviously can talk about it only from the point of view of the Department of Health—we want and are seeing more disabled people going into work. I would point to one big investment that the Department of Health is making, which is the disabled facilities grant. That is about making sure that disabled people can live at home and have their independence, which of course is critical to maintaining their physical health and confidence to make them, in a way, ready to go into work. I know that there are other programmes being put through job centres and the Department for Work and Pensions to make sure that they are supported, too.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for laying before Parliament today the government response, 11 months after the report was produced, to the House of Lords Select Committee report on the long-term sustainability of the NHS. We will now get an opportunity to debate the report and the Government’s response in due course. One recommendation that was accepted was the renaming of the Department of Health as the Department of Health and Social Care. Attached to that was the recommendation that the budgets should be amalgamated so that we can provide social care to all those who need it—both care for the disabled and adult social care. Would he like to comment on that?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I am glad to be able to publish the response at last, and apologise again for how long it has taken. I am pleased to report that we have not just changed the name of the department but given the strategic direction for social care policy back to it. That also includes strategic direction of funding—but the actual funding settlement happens through the local government funding settlement. I have to disappoint the noble Lord on that because there are no current plans to change it.