Wes Streeting was accused of “kicking the can down the road” when it comes to introducing social care reform on Radio 4 this morning.
The health secretary was called out by BBC presenter Mishal Husain ahead of Labour’s first Budget in 15 years tomorrow, where the NHS is set to receive enough funding to deliver 40,000 more elective appointments per week.
But the presenter asked just what his government were going to do to improve social care specifically.
Husain said: “One of the serious problems facing the NHS is social care, and the lack of funding for social care to the extent that matches the demand.”
Streeting refused to say if there was any money set aside in the Budget to reform social care ahead of tomorrow’s announcement.
So Husain replied: “If there isn’t, that affects the whole performance of the NHS, doesn’t it?”
He said there is no aspect of the health system that does not “involve social care and dealing with late discharges”, and called for a 10-year plan to reform it.
The presenter asked: “Do you accept that if you don’t make a serious start of investment in social care tomorrow, it could well impede your ability to get to a significant point by the one-year anniversary of the election, which is to have 40,000 new hospital appointments and procedures every week?”
He said he was trying to create a “national consensus” around social care, but Husain cut in and said: “You know what, that sounds like kicking the can down the road.
“We’ve had years where parties haven’t really wanted to make decisions, take responsibility for their decisions themselves, they always talk about cross-party consensus.
“And we’ve had an attempt at that, that’s what the Dilnot report was all about!”
The 2011 Dilnot Commission Report on social care, met with intense criticism at the time, suggested a lifetime cap on care costs at £35,000.
Streeting replied by saying the Tories had promised to introduce a care cap but did not introduce any funding for it and “hadn’t even put in place the operational changes” to bring it into place.
He also said it was a “good and noble intention” to bring consensus in for managing social care, noting that multiple parties are keen to work together on this.
“I think we’ve all got some blame and responsibility to bear for the state of social care. This has plagued successive governments,” he said.