Hospital Beds and Social Care

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I begin by wishing the noble Lord and all your Lordships a happy new year. We have started the national discharge task force, with membership from local government, the NHS and national government, and we have looked at the different pathways. There are four pathways: one is direct discharge, one is interim discharge, and one is for those who need a bit more support. But then sometimes individual cases are quite different; sometimes a place is offered, but the family may not be happy, so we have to find other ways. One thing that the national discharge task force has been doing is to look for spaces, wherever they may be, across the health and social care system to see whether they would be suitable for interim—but we are looking at all sorts of solutions in partnership with local authorities.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, while I welcome the very substantial additional resources given to the health service, will my noble friend revisit the decision to delay making money available for social care purposes? That money is needed now to finance the care workers and finance those places in care homes. Without it, we will continue to see bed-blocking, so it is a policy that is self-defeating.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point. In the White Paper, People at the Heart of Care, we have set out our vision for adult social care and outlined our priorities. Throughout the pandemic, we made available nearly £2.9 billion in specific funding for adult social care—£1.75 billion for infection prevention and control, £523 million for testing and £583 million to support workforce capacity and recruitment, as well as all the other measures that I have previously referred to as part of the task force.