Huw speaks in the opposition day debate on Social Care. The video is available to watch here: https://goo.gl/sakwKm and you can read Huw's speech below:
East Sussex has the second-highest proportion of over 85-year-olds in the country, and that number is expected to grow by 14% by 2021. As for the care homes in my constituency, 55 of them are rated good, but unfortunately 29 require improvement and one is inadequate. Not only does East Sussex have a large population of people who need to be looked after, but the system is clearly not working as it should. In my constituency, 33% of the working-age population are on the living wage, so to continue to expect council tax payers to fund the social care model will not help them get on in life and will not help intergenerational fairness. I was therefore pleased to hear the Prime Minister talk at the Dispatch Box about the short-term impact of the Government’s £2 billion announced in the previous Budget and the council tax levy. However, due to the situation with council tax payers and the small tax base that I have in East Sussex, I support her when she talks about the need for medium and long-term reform.
In the medium term, East Sussex’s model is to work as a Better Together partnership, where the council, the NHS trust and clinical commissioning groups all work as one. Indeed, they are all on one email and have emailed me over the past couple of days about what can be done, which shows that they really are working together.
As I have mentioned, our accident and emergency team is the most improved in the last six months because the Better Together partnership is now working. People are now getting out of hospital earlier and, indeed, are not having the trips, slips and falls that cause them to go to A&E. The model works well.
However, I have one ask of the Minister, who has a background in compliance. The NHS trust is managed by NHS Improvement and the clinical commissioning group is managed by NHS England, and the regulators are not working together. Those organisations therefore sometimes struggle to work together, such as on billing, contractual challenge and payments, because the regulators are telling them different things. I would like a single accountable regulator for the entire sphere, and I hope that my leaders will be able to meet the Minister to discuss their challenges and what can be done.
Cross-party consensus is surely the way forward. I hope the Opposition will note that I have not once attacked them. I have heard some fantastic speeches. In particular, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) talked passionately about what we can do together. In reality, we will have no majority for these five years, and social care will be reformed only if we work together. Please, can we do so?