Adult Social Care

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her warm welcome for the White Paper. [Interruption.]

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

It’s not a laughing matter.

[Gillian Keegan]

It is not a laughing matter—it certainly is not. Of course, calling for something is much different from delivering something. We are taking steps to fix social care. We are grappling with this challenge, and we will meet it. In 13 years, what did Labour do? Two Green Papers, one royal commission, one spending review—and the result? Absolutely nothing. They are good at calling for things, but they are not very good at delivering things.

The hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) mentioned immediate pressures. It is right to say that there are immediate pressures on all our workforces as we bounce back from the pandemic, but in particular on our health and social care workforces. We have always said that. We have challenges across the winter, and we know that we need to meet those challenges. That is why we put a winter plan in place, and it is why we have given additional funding to the sector. We have given additional funding to the sector all the way through the pandemic. We have given an extra £2.5 billion.

For the workforce specifically, we gave £120 million for January to March this year. That resulted in 7.5 million extra hours in the sector and 39,000 new recruits. As that was a successful intervention, we have repeated it for this period. In fact, that money—£162.5 million—has just started landing in councils’ bank accounts, and that is to take them up to March. We know there are pressures, and we know there is a lot of competition for labour, but we hope that that will be as successful as the previous interventions.

Of course, this is a 10-year vision, and we have to start with that vision. [Interruption.] I know that the hon. Lady and Opposition Members will look forward to reading the White Paper and seeing the vision.

[Peter Kyle]

It won’t take long.

[Gillian Keegan]

It will take long. It is over 100 pages, so it will take a reasonable time if Members are interested in actually finding the solutions.

The hon. Member for Leicester West also asked about workforce strategy and the NHS compared with social care. Obviously, the people in the NHS are employed by the NHS, which is a public body. Social care is largely a private system. There are 18,000 or more businesses. That is why it is a different sector and why we deal with workforce strategy differently. However, we have £500 million to invest in the social care workforce and to make sure that we invest in the knowledge and skills framework, careers options and so on.

There are 1.54 million workers in the sector and they are hugely valued. The hon. Lady said they are leaving in droves. Actually, what we have in the sector is a continual demographic shift in terms of need, and it grows by 1% to 2% every year, so we are always trying to recruit new workers into the sector. Of course, it is very important that these fundamental reforms take place so that we get more people attracted to the sector, more people staying in the sector, more people progressing in the sector and more people providing excellent care all day, every day, providing a lifeline to people across the country.