A Plan for the NHS and Social Care

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab) [V]]

I must admit that I greatly enjoyed the Health Secretary appearing to argue that our health and care sectors need to recover after a decade of Tory government—I could not agree more. The covid-19 pandemic has served to expose the damage done by Tory austerity and privatisation to our NHS and social care sectors. They are understaffed and underfunded, while existing staff are overworked and underpaid. However, unlike the Health Secretary, I do not think that further privatisation is the answer, even if he and his pals are already drooling at the thought of selling off the NHS to every Tom, Dick and Tory donor.

It is clear that our health and social care sectors are in crisis. Before the pandemic, there were over 100,000 NHS vacancies, while a quarter of staff were more likely to leave than in the year before. The Government’s plan to address that is to give NHS staff another real-terms pay cut. Added to that, there are an estimated 112,000 social care staff vacancies. Again, with zero-hours contracts and median pay of just £8.50 an hour, I do not think there is any great mystery behind that shortage. However, the social care crisis goes beyond staffing. Age UK estimates that there are 1.5 million older people not receiving the social care support they need. Councils have had their budgets slashed by nearly 50% on average since the Tories came to power, with around £8 billion taken out of social care budgets since 2010, so is it any surprise?

We desperately need a plan for social care that relieves the pressure on unpaid carers and widens access to adult social care where it is needed, yet the Government appear clueless. This crisis requires a dynamic Government: a Government who are ready to accept the ideological failures of austerity and privatisation, who are willing to invest in publicly-run health and social care services, and who reward the workers who staff them. Instead, the promised plan for social care is still missing, private healthcare firms are being welcomed with open arms, and workers face pay cuts and poverty wages.

The Health Secretary speaks about the prevention agenda, but the main cause of ill health is not obesity alone; it is poverty. He can talk about levelling up, building back better and the rest of their buzzword bingo, but until the Government address insecure work, low wages and welfare reform, health inequalities will continue to grow. The Government need to wake up to the health and social care crisis, because the effects are already being felt by real people—the people this Government promised to help.