Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the policy paper entitled 2023 to 2025 Better Care Fund policy framework, published on 5 April 2023, how his Department is using the additional £1.6 billion funding for the discharge of hospital patients into social care.

The 2023 to 2025 Better Care Fund policy framework allows areas to plan more strategically over a longer period. We have committed at least £16.8 billion to improve discharge, as well as reduce pressure on urgent and emergency care, social care, intermediate care, unpaid carers and housing. This includes an extra £600 million in 2023/24 and £1 billion in 2024/25 allocated via the Discharge Fund to local authorities and integrated care boards. They have the flexibility to spend this in ways they deem most appropriate to assist local areas in freeing up the maximum number of hospital beds and reducing bed days lost through, for example, short-term packages of care, community-based reablement capacity or building the workforce capacity needed to continue to support care users.