NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Catherine Elizabeth West (Labour, Centre-left): I do not know whether a Brexit-fever madness took over, but there was a moment when cutting community pharmacies seemed like the right thing to do. Clearly, it was the wrong thing to do at such a crucial time, particularly given the impact of the illnesses to which we all fall prey during the winter months In my earlier intervention, I asked the Secretary of State about the flu epidemic. He assured me on the number of vaccinations, and I am pleased that more people have been vaccinated against seasonal flu. However, let me return to the point I was making. I understand that there has been quite an increase in the number of young people getting the flu, so we are not talking about people in the herd group who would have been advised to be inoculated against it. When people, tragically, get the flu they suffer, and doctors do not have time to isolate those individual cases. That creates a real risk, given how busy staff are, that that flu could become an epidemic. Having given us assurances today, I hope the Secretary of State will take that point up further with chief executives of acute trusts I want to give colleagues an idea of what is happening on social care. In 2010, I was a council leader and we had a social care budget for children—this is nothing to do with schools, just children—of £102 million. The same local authority now, in a busy London area, has for 2017-18 got a budget of £46 million. If someone is really telling me that the needs are half as much as they were in 2010 or that somehow families need less help and support, which is what children’s social care provides, I would be very surprised. A cut from £102 million to £46 million in 2017-18 is deeply worrying for the children who are in desperate need of social care Adult social care is equally worrying. The Secretary of State told us on Monday that we should not worry because £600 million is going into social care. I would not worry, except that I happen to know that, between 2010 and 2015, £4.8 billion was taken out. Anyone who has even key stage 2 maths will know that that does not add up. If £4.8 billion is taken out over a five-year Parliament, putting in £600 million 18 months later is not going to help I feel sorry for councils. If they increase tax, that is quite unpopular, but if they do not the Government blame them for not wanting to sort out the social care crisis. Even where the precept does bring the local authority quite a lot of money, the amounts raised do not help in the longer term because they just go towards a short-term fix—we are not actually fixing the problem that we need to be looking at: we need more homes in which older people can live comfortably, have fewer falls and accidents, be warmer so that they are not suffering from fuel poverty, and stay out of A&Es It is all about long-term planning, but we have built hardly any new homes, even for older folk. If we did so we could start a chain and enable their families to move into their old homes, thereby solving another problem. We have reached a crisis in which older folk end up in A&E and, on occasion, have to wait on a trolley for 35 hours, which I still cannot quite believe. I am sure that the newspapers are telling the truth, but 35 hours is an awfully long time to be on a trolley and not be seen Last year, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham and I had a debate on mental health in this very Chamber, which was followed by a meeting of Members of Parliament from the local sub-region. We were very worried about people suffering from mental health problems, for whom there is currently a perfect storm. First, there have been benefits cuts. We are now in our seventh year of austerity, and there is no doubt that people with mental health problems have been right at the bottom of the pile. Secondly, we have seen cuts to supported housing and all the programmes that helped people suffering with mental health problems to keep their tenancies. That is all being cut, so people have no one to support them, which is part of the reason they fall ill. Thirdly, we have seen cuts to the number of nurses. There are fewer mental health nurses in the system than there were two years ago and, of course, fewer beds A constituent came to see me at my surgery in November to say that he had fallen ill with a mental health problem. He was very surprised because he had never suffered in such a way before and was amazed by the poor care he received, in part because no one was available to diagnose him properly. He spent more than 24 hours in a padded cell, with no explanation and no indication of what sort of service he could expect. There were so few beds that he was sent about 20 miles away to be cared for at another hospital, leading to a great deal of stress and worry for his family The whole health system is in crisis and needs our urgent attention. Despite all the demands, political and otherwise, that the Brexit process is going to create, I hope we will not forget not only the most vulnerable—those with mental health problems or in social care and so on—but our basic, universal NHS for all.