Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-14
Topic: Health
Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I would like to make it clear that the Liberal Democrats have long supported the aim of integration between health and social care, and the far greater involvement of local authorities in the planning, commissioning and delivery of services. We recognise that the pandemic has forced many of these bodies to work closely together in a much more collaborative way, and that is welcome. However, the Bill pays lip service to social care. It is largely a Bill about NHS reform, with yet another acronym-laden reorganisation that seeks to provide the legislative basis to integrate NHS services, currently in crisis mode, with a broken, underfunded and fragmented social care system. It is a massive power grab by the Secretary of State for political interference in operational and local service reconfiguration decisions and in who runs integrated care boards. The Bill is woefully inadequate in ensuring that the plans and resources are in place to ensure that we have sufficient doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals and carers to deliver care, both now and in the future. This is all against a backdrop of record waiting lists and staff who are burnt out, stressed and struggling to cope with the third wave of the pandemic while dealing with surging A&E visitors and tackling the enormous backlog of care Without meaningful social care reform, this Bill cannot realise its aim of providing citizens with better joined-up care. With over 100,000 vacancies in the workforce, 1.5 million people are currently missing out on the care they need, putting additional burdens on the NHS and, importantly, on 9 million unpaid carers. The Government have promised—at the moment I take them at their word, though they have broken it many times—that they will bring forward social care reforms later this year. So why not delay the Bill for a few months and take account of the new model of social care, rather than doing a half-baked job now? It really beggars belief when we look back over the past 16 months of the pandemic that the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), who was the architect of the proposals, seriously thought that granting himself more powers over the day-to-day running of the NHS was a good idea. We only need to look at the PPE fiasco and the failures of test and trace, both of which were run centrally, to see that handing back power to the Secretary of State is the very opposite of what we need. Allowing him or her to meddle in the day-to-day running of our NHS seems to fly in the face of the desire for more local and regional decision making I fully support and endorse the proposals of the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) on the health and care workforce independent planning proposals. They need to be properly resourced and annually reported to Parliament. Without a workforce plan, without wholesale reform of social care and while waiting lists are skyrocketing and the Health Secretary is embarking on a power grab that is his predecessor’s vanity project, this Bill will fail in its fundamental aim, shared by most Members of this House and health and care leaders—