Health and Social Care

Peter Bone Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Member makes an exceptionally important point. In addition to the £6 billion that we put into supporting local government throughout the pandemic, we are putting more in precisely to support social care. That will ramp up over time as the system kicks in. The distribution will be set out in due course by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Nobody in this House, and I doubt anyone in the country, will be surprised that the Prime Minister has the guts to take on reforming social care when none of his predecessors did. I was amazed that in the statement he pointed out that roughly one in three hospital beds are occupied by people who could be better treated and cared for elsewhere. It seems to me from my surgeries that the problem is largely due to local government and the health service not working together. When can we see some improvement in that?

[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.