Health and Social Care

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is completely right, and I am sure he speaks for Members across the House who have experienced this problem in their surgeries for years. There is a mismatch between health and social care and there is not a proper system for deciding where people should be treated for their own benefit, and the result is that we get these huge pressures of delayed discharge that make it more difficult to deal with the elective surgery that people need—particularly now. That is why we must do both things at once, and that is why we are doing what we are doing.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) have hit the nail on the head: there is no plan for social care. What the Prime Minister has listed is money to go into the NHS. Will he tell us now when the money will go to local authorities so that it can go to those domiciliary and residential social care providers who actually need it?

[The Prime Minister]

It is all in the plan. The overwhelming bulk of the funding begins with support for frontline NHS electives, for nurses’ pay and for vaccines; then, as the social care plan ramps up, the ratio changes. It will be set out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.