Health and Social Care Levy — House of Commons, 2021-09-08
Topic: Mixed Topics
Laura Trott (Conservative, Centre-right): This area of social care has not had a happy history in respect of political point scoring, and, unfortunately, we have seen plenty of that today on the Opposition Benches. However, it is unacceptable for us to play Russian roulette with people’s life savings when it comes to social care. One in seven people are going to be affected by this. Just because their loved one died of dementia rather than cancer, their life savings are being entirely wiped out. That is not right, but it is right that we are doing something about it, and I am glad that we are seeing some element of cross-party consensus on the model. It is the Dilnot model, and the Health and Social Committee, of which I am a member, put it forward as a proposal. It was supported by the Liberal Democrats when we were in government with them, and to a degree, I think, by the Labour party. So at least we are moving forward slightly in that regard. The real question now is how we pay for this. There has been a lot of confected indignation on the other side of the House to cover up a lack of a plan. National insurance is imperfect in many ways, but, as Tony Blair said: "If we want sustained investment in the NHS over a period of time, we are going to have to pay for it." He suggested that national insurance was the fairest and best way to do it. I agree with him, even if members of his own party do not seem to. Paul Johnson from the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that "overall much needed reforms to social care are being introduced and unavoidable pressures on the NHS are being funded through a broad based and broadly progressive tax increase. That is better than doing nothing." It is incumbent on Opposition Members to really look at themselves and to understand whether they think real change is needed. If it is, they need to come up with a better alternative. Otherwise, they need to walk through the Lobby with Members on this side of the House who are taking difficult decisions on behalf of our constituents. These are not easy decisions. They are not decisions that can be explained away by saying that we are not doing this in a broad-based way when we are, or by making things up about this not being progressive when it is. We are taking these difficult decisions because that is what the Conservatives do in a moment of crisis My colleague on the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow), was right to say that reform was needed. This is an awful lot of money that we are putting into a system that is very broken. A third of social care staff leave every year and there are 120,000 vacancies in the sector. We will need to up the quality of provision and to inspect it properly. We will need to ensure that the integrated care services that are being put in place are assessed by the Care Quality Commission. We will also need to ensure that local government is held to account on the standards of care that it provides. These are all important reforms. We need to ensure that social care is truly part of the NHS, so that a nurse can take a year to go and work in the care service and then come back into a hospital. These reforms will all be necessary to ensure that we deliver on our high ambitions for change. We are taking steps to make that change. We will ensure that the options available to families are of high quality and that they will not take away their life savings. We are taking difficult decisions, and the Opposition need to look at themselves and decide whether they are doing the same.