Adult Social Care

Steve Brine Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that the complexity is broad. We have always anticipated that we would have winter challenges to deal with. With the global pandemic, there is a backlog of all kinds of things that people need—diagnosis, operations, electives and so on—plus all the other challenges such as winter flu and new variants of covid, which are still here. That is why we have specifically put a winter plan in place; we have also set out hundreds of millions of pounds of extra funding to look specifically at the winter challenges and the discharge process. It is not easy, because of the absolute growth in demand. We knew that it was always going to be challenging, and we regularly monitor and measure it with our NHS colleagues.

The hon. Lady mentions a fundamental pillar: the integration of health and social care. That will be subject to another White Paper, which will come early next year and will have more details about integration. She is absolutely right that it is another solid foundation on which social care reform will stand.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Obviously I will study the White Paper that has been published today, and I welcome the cap that we are introducing. Opposition Front Benchers may have turned up in force today, although they have scuttled off now, but they did not do anything about the issue in 13 years in government. As far as I can tell from the response today, there is absolutely nothing coming back across the Dispatch Box from any of the Opposition parties.

I think I am right in saying that the upper limit of the disabled facilities grant for home adaptations is being increased. Can my hon. Friend confirm that that will help my Winchester and Chandler’s Ford constituents with things like stairlifts and wet rooms, which are really important to people’s day-to-day quality of life? Will she say exactly when it will kick in, please?

[Gillian Keegan]

We will commit a further £573 million per year to the disabled facilities grant between 2022-23 and 2024-25. We are also taking steps to ensure that the disabled facilities grant can benefit more people in need. We will consult on some of those steps in 2022.