The government’s Health and Care Bill presented a huge opportunity to deliver the vital integration between health and care services that patients, their families, unpaid carers and sector professionals have been crying out for.
The Liberal Democrats have long been in favour of better integration between health and care services, but we believe this Bill will not provide patients with better more joined-up care.
The answer to the immediate pressures facing our health and social care system cannot be yet another reorganisation of the NHS without proper reform of the social care system at the same time.
This Bill barely pays lip service to social care and workforce issues, and scandalously makes almost no mention of unpaid carers at all.
Social care reform is key to a properly functioning, integrated NHS.Boris Johnson recognised this when he stood on the steps of No 10 Downing Street in 2019 and pledged to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all” .
This Bill would have been the perfect opportunity for his government to do just this but they have chosen not to.Instead they have released various White Papers and introduced a new unfair tax on those least able to afford it.
Ensuring the NHS and social care system is properly staffed would be afar better plan. Yet unjustifiably, this Conservative government refuses to amend the Bill to include a duty to produce proper long-term workforce planning. It is therefore obvious that they are not serious about using this Bill as a route to solving this crisis.
It is also hard to believe that allowing the Health Minister more powers over the running of the NHS, as this Bill intends, will bring better outcomes or alleviate pressure on the system.
At worst this will surely lead to meddling and the politicisation of the day to day operations of the NHS, and at best it will likely create a bureaucratic nightmare.Ministers argue that the pandemic showed the need for the minister to have more powers. But the two areas Matt Hancock had power over were PPE and Test and Trace, both of which were extremely poorly handled.Even Jeremy Hunt, speaking as a former Health Minister, has said he didn’t feel like he needed any extra powers to do his job.
Key Points:
• The Liberal Democrats have long been in favour of better integration between health and care services, but we believe this Bill will not provide patients with better more joined-up care.
• We fear that at worst the new powers being awarded to the Secretary ofState would lead to meddling and the politicisation of the day-to-day running of the NHS, and at best it will be a bureaucratic nightmare.
• This Bill pays lip service to social care and workforce issues, and scandalously makes no mention of unpaid carers.
Daisy Cooper is a Liberal Democrat politician who has served as MP for the constituency of St Albans since 2019. Cooper has served as the deputy leader of her party since 2020 and has been its spokesperson for health, wellbeing and social care since 2021.
This article originally appeared in The Leaders Council’s special report on ‘The Impact of the Health & Care Bill’, published on March 4, 2022. Read the full special report here.
