Social Care Funding

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

I want to make a brief contribution, picking up on the excellent contribution by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall). The Minister said earlier that he sent money out to various local authorities, which is welcome, but frankly it is a sticking plaster. It would have been great if he had come and said, “I have heard the outrage and frustration across the country about the number of people who have to stay in hospital because there is no social care for them, people who have inadequate care and people who cannot get the care their deserve, and I am bringing a Green Paper to Parliament today. I will ensure that it is looked at and dealt with as a matter of urgency, and then I will bring a White Paper. We will actually grasp the nettle and sort this out.” The hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), unless I misheard him, rightly agreed. Unless we get a hold of this issue, this debate will happen again in six months, a year, two years and three years.

The Secretary of State challenged my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on parties working together. If he has read our manifesto, he will have seen that, before it says how we are going to spend the money, it says that we commit to working on a cross-party basis to sort this out—it says it in the manifesto. But people have to mean what they say. It is no good all of us in the Chamber saying that we agree if, the first time a shadow spokesperson or a Minister gets up and says something, people decry it. That will not work and we will, in the end, let the people of this country down.

That is what I wanted to say, Madam Deputy Speaker. People are raging about this; Parliament should be raging. The Secretary of State and Ministers—they are Ministers of the Crown—have it within their power to get it sorted. That is what this debate and this Parliament is saying to the ministerial team today: let’s get this sorted. The people out there deserve it.

[Several hon. Members rose—]