Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

13. What progress his Department has made on improving out-of-hospital care for frail elderly people.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

17. What progress his Department has made on improving out-of-hospital care for frail elderly people.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

Improving the quality of out-of-hospital care is the biggest strategic long-term change that we need to make in the NHS. It will help to make the NHS sustainable. Reforming the GP contract is the first step, but we also need to make major progress on integrating the health and social care systems.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick de Bois]

Enfield CCG is working closely with Enfield council to try to deliver integrated health and social care, particularly for the elderly and the frail. Noting our higher-than-average elderly age demographic in the borough, will the Secretary of State take steps to ensure that those efforts are supported with extra funding?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend knows that the funding arrangements are decided independently of the Government, by NHS England, which will make its decision at a board meeting before Christmas. He is absolutely right to suggest that the funding formula should reflect not only social deprivation but the age profile of constituents, because the oldest people are of course the heaviest users of the NHS.