Hospital Beds: Social Care

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness. We are all seeing different shapes and forms of describing how we need a local care system set up by the integrated care boards that can have an overview of all the needs in their area. That is exactly what we are doing, and exactly what the Patricia Hewitt review is reviewing. It will give advice on how best to do that by looking at the best needs of mental health care patients, or any other kind of patient, to make sure that the proper institutions and places are set up to give them the up-front support so that, as the noble Baroness said, they never need to go to hospital in the first place.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, while recognising the current problems caused by bed blockages in NHS hospitals due to capacity and social care issues, does the Minister agree with the report from the Health Foundation, which, looking ahead, suggests that, because of changing demography and disease patterns in future, we will require between 25,000 and 40,000 more beds in the NHS if we are going to cope with the pressures on both the NHS and social care? What plans do the Government have to address that?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

We are absolutely aware that we need long-term plans and forecasts. That is also one of the things that the healthcare workforce plan will take into account: it will look at exactly where the capacity needs to be on a regional basis going forward so that we have the right number of hospital beds and social care places for an elderly and growing demographic in terms of age groups.