Department of Health and Social Care

Mike Martin Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran]

In our Committee hearing just this morning, we heard that all parts of the system want this. Acute care trusts recognise that they have the bulk of the investment, but they realise that unless they start pooling budgets and working in an integrated way, we will not achieve the productivity gains that we desperately need.

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

The Government’s policy is actually achieving the opposite for social care of what the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) suggests. Peter runs a small domiciliary service in my constituency that is going bust. That means 35 people without a job, a loss of £100,000 in taxes every year, and all those patients now blocking beds in hospitals. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) agree that the Government’s policies are downgrading and trashing social care, rather than boosting it?

[Layla Moran]

I share my hon. Friend’s frustration that we are not doing more faster. Indeed, the first inquiry that our Committee has launched is on social care and the cost of inaction, because there is a cost to doing nothing, and we need to quantify that as best we can.

On the three shifts, the shift to the community is incredibly important, not least because successive Secretaries of State have said that they want that shift, yet the money has flowed in the opposite direction.