Oral Answers

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Lady raises an important issue related to MS. I am happy to write to her with a more detailed answer about the capability and the plan. There is always a tendency within government to lurch to a strategy rather than to look at what is needed for immediate delivery. I will happily set out what steps we are taking now as part of our pandemic recovery in order to target the workforce within the constraints that she raises.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

14. What steps he is taking to improve access to in-home health and social care services.

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

24. What steps he is taking to improve access to in-home health and social care services.

[The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)]

I want people to live independently in their own homes for longer with the care that they need. We are investing half a billion pounds annually through the disabled facilities grant to pay for housing adaptations, and supporting the home care workforce through our record social care funding increase and workforce reforms. Our new and expanded NHS virtual wards give people hospital-level care in their own homes.

[Mike Amesbury]

My constituent, Ewan, recently lost his grandfather. His grandfather would have liked to have spent more time at home in his last few days, but he could not because of resources—the people were not there. What are the Government doing about that? There is a real recruitment and retention crisis in the social care workforce.

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Member makes an important point about people spending their last days of life where they would like to spend them, which, more often than not, means at home. That comes down to supporting end-of-life care—hospices play a really important role in providing that care in people’s homes—and supporting the adult social care workforce. We are investing up to £7.5 billion in social care over the next two years and taking forward important reforms to support the adult social care workforce. As I mentioned a moment ago, we are increasing the amount of hospital-level care that people can get at home by expanding our virtual wards, which, by next winter, will mean that up to 50,000 people a month can be cared for to that level at home.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

T4. Last week, I visited Leftwich Community Primary School in my constituency. The joint head teachers raised the desperate attempts that are made to secure NHS dentists for children and families in the community. Aside from publishing a plan, will Ministers intervene and make sure that that happens in Cheshire and Merseyside, and throughout the country?

[Neil O’Brien]

Absolutely. We have already taken action to increase the provision of dentistry, and that has begun to have an effect. Activity—the number of people seen—is up by a fifth over the past year as a result of the reforms that we have begun to make by reforming the old contract, but we must go further.