NHS and Social Care Commission
Debate between Nick Clegg and Caroline Flint(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Caroline Flint
I hope that I have not given the impression that good work is not happening and good services do not exist. In my constituency not long ago, our district nurses were supporting treatment and care in the home for people who had problems with their legs and needed them bandaging. For a couple of months, those patients were incredibly nervous because they had heard that the nurses would no longer come to their home and they would have to go to the GP’s surgery for bandaging. Fortunately, it did not work out like that, but the stress about the future of their treatment caused those people a problem.
We can all talk about things that are working or not working in our constituencies. We can all point to good practice. It is a frustration of mine, not just in health, that best practice is not the driver for good practice everywhere. I do not know why we keep reinventing the wheel. We have to look at the bigger issues, and that is why I commend the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) and the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) for securing the debate today.
We have an important role in this House. It is not only about holding this or any Government to account; it is about shining a light on the social problems that our country faces and offering solutions that are not just for one term of a Parliament. The motion helps to highlight an ongoing generational problem and proposes a path to find some sort of solution.
The UK is an ageing society. We are a society growing older. Looking around the Chamber today, I am tempted to say, “Put your hand in the air if you are under 50.” Five.
Caroline Flint
I think we are talking about a minority. We are here as politicians, but also as citizens with families and living in our communities as we discuss the policies and politics that will touch people’s lives. We are living longer, and that brings a lot of joy. We often talk about the things that are bad, but there is a lot of joy about living longer, too. It is not uncommon today to meet older people who are great-grandparents yet still active enough to look after their great-grandchildren.
The current generation of older citizens share some of the problems of previous generations. There is still poverty, and loneliness is ever more common, as those living longest outlive their lifetime companions, and as families no longer live in close-knit communities. But this generation are different from previous generations. They are less deferential—and rightly so. They expect more from life. They are not waiting for the grim reaper—they have lives to lead. Many will live 30 or more years in retirement. Not so long ago, that was half a lifetime. This generation rightly demand more. They are less likely to accept just what the state offers and lump it. If the options for their retirement, for their living arrangements, for their social care or other assistance are not to their liking, they will voice their protest. And they do so, as a generation who overwhelmingly own their own homes and want to remain independent, within four walls to call their own, for as long as possible.
Madam Deputy Speaker, this debate is timely because, less than a year on from the general election, none of the big, long-term problems facing the NHS, in particular the integration of social care and the fair funding of social care, is any closer to being resolved. We know that the NHS has always been an election issue, and we should not apologise for that. Nor should we expect that to change in the short term. We know that in the last election and the one before, the problem of funding social care, so that families do not always lose their homes to pay for long-term social care, has been an election issue. I recall in 2010 a Conservative billboard with a tombstone and the message, “Now Gordon wants £20,000 when you die. Don’t vote for Labour’s new death tax.”
I am not going to sound purer than the driven snow on this. Our party has also upped the ante on some of these issues. Yet today, one in 10 of the public can face bills of over £100,000 for social care. It makes a bill of £20,000 deferred seem a pretty attractive deal. But so nervous are Governments of this issue that this Administration have deferred the introduction of a cap on total costs from 2016 to 2020. And the cap is only on costs over £72,000. I do not want to spend time on the merits of the Government’s proposals. Suffice it to say that they are complex. They rely on local authority assessments. They create different thresholds and ceilings for contributions. Coming forward with proposals that are fair to all yet meet need, without unduly penalising those who saved for a lifetime, is not easy; it really is not, and the problems will not be solved by a five-year plan.
The challenge remains to put in place a social care funding system that is fair to people of different income levels, a system that can be embraced by all parties and, crucially, by successive Governments of different colours. For these reasons, I believe that the motion is so right today. We need an independent commission for those big long-term decisions. The same problem applies to some of the other challenges facing the NHS that colleagues have raised today. They include securing long-term funding for the NHS, particularly when successive Governments are rebalancing the Government’s income and expenditure to reduce and then eliminate the deficit and meeting the long-term challenge of demographic change, of the rising sophistication and costs of new medical technologies and of new pioneering treatments. At one and the same time, the potential for new and radical treatments is almost unlimited, but the budgets to meet them are not.
Added to that, as we look at how we devolve services in England, to which I am not opposed, we need to think about where the accountability lies, and whether there are the checks and balances to ensure that there is not only quality, but value for money. As a relatively new member of the Public Accounts Committee, I can already see that we do not have the accountability structures in place to ensure that those providing services regionally and locally are operating transparently.
When I was first elected in 1997, half the buildings used by the NHS predated its existence. Financial pressures had led to a huge backlog of investment in NHS buildings. Between 1997 and 2010, the Labour Government invested record amounts in new NHS buildings—from major hospitals to modern, multi-purpose health centres, walk-in centres and GP practices. One of the ministerial jobs that I was most proud to hold was public health Minister, because one aspect of providing better buildings in the community was moving services out of hospitals and closer to people. That was especially important in areas where health inequalities were evident, because it was a way of ensuring that the people there, who are often the most vulnerable and least assertive, could see in their community the services available to them.
If we are to plan for future investment, we need consensus, because while those buildings were welcomed, not least by NHS staff and patients, their private finance initiative funding has always remained contentious. Planning for sustained investment requires a consensus that gives future Governments—and, dare I say it, this Government —the courage to take big decisions. Only a truly independent commission with real expertise and weight will begin to unpick the real costs, options and pinch points facing the NHS, and deal with the hard choices about how we meet the future of health and social care.
Such a commission can also play a role in involving staff and the public. We need a grown-up discussion outside this place—we need one inside, too—about the challenges ahead. The public and NHS staff need to be involved, so that they can be helped not only to make decisions, but to understand the responsibilities that they might have in supporting a new NHS and social care service. Such a process would represent a worthwhile investment of public money if it could achieve a social contract between the parties and the British people to provide a new secure base for the future of health and social care.
This is about change. Today’s NHS bears no comparison with that created some 60 years ago. We need to face up to change and importantly, as part of that, to help people to cope with change, because that can be frightening. We want a better and stronger NHS, but let us also have a smarter NHS. I hope that Government and Opposition Front Benchers will respond positively to the proposal.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Nick Clegg and Caroline Flint(14 years, 2 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
Aside from these improvements, the arrangements for drawing the boundaries will remain untouched. For more than 60 years, the responsibility for drawing constituency boundaries has rested with the four independent boundary commissions. That guarantee of impartiality will remain. This is not, as some critics have sought to suggest, an elaborate attempt to gerrymander the boundaries, because the Government will have no say in where the new constituency perimeters will fall.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I said I was giving way to the right hon. Lady. Is the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) answering to that?
Caroline Flint
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, but why has he settled on a figure that is different from the one proposed by him in the Liberal Democrat manifesto—which was to reduce the Chamber by 150, I believe—or by the Conservatives, who sought to reduce the number to 585? Has the figure of 600 been settled on because going any further in the downward direction would affect Tory and Liberal Democrat seats rather than just Labour ones, as proposed?
The Deputy Prime Minister
We settled on 600 MPs, a relatively modest cut in House numbers of just less than 8%, because it saves money—about £12 million each year—and because we think it creates a House that is sufficiently large to hold the Government to account while enabling us all to do our jobs of representing our constituencies. It also creates a sensible average number of constituents—76,000, as I mentioned earlier—that we already know is manageable because there are already 218 seats that are within 5% of that number. That is why we feel 600 is about right.
Political and Constitutional Reform
Debate between Nick Clegg and Caroline Flint(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
We are the only Parliament in the world whose second Chamber is larger than the first, and Labour’s next phase of reform would have addressed that—[Interruption.]
The Deputy Prime Minister
I am delighted to hear that the right hon. Lady is already talking about the next phase of Labour’s reforms. I wonder what that is. Is it the phase that was in the manifesto in 1997 that was never delivered; the phase about improving individual electoral registration; the phase in favour of a referendum; the phase to devolve power; or the phase to decentralise government in this country?
The Deputy Prime Minister
At the rate the Opposition are going, there is never going to be another phase.