UK Parliament / Open data

Care and Support

Proceeding contribution from Earl Howe (Conservative) in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 11 July 2012. It occurred during Ministerial statement on Care and Support.

I am grateful to the noble Lord and thank him for all his work in this area over the years. However, I am sorry that he regards the glass as only being 20% full. I would regard it as much more full than that, bearing in mind the contents of the White Paper that I outlined earlier. No, we are under no illusions about the scale of the issue, its importance or the need to get it right if the NHS is not to bear the brunt of serious strain within social care. It is an urgent matter. We are determined to fill the glass to its fullest at the earliest opportunity.

On integration, as I am sure the noble Lord knows, we have options open to us already to ensure that budgets can be pooled at a local level. This is happening in many areas. It is a very useful device to enable the NHS and social care to share responsibility for delivering care to patients and service users, who after all do not mind very much whether the service is delivered by the NHS or by social care as long as the right service is delivered. We need to work much harder on that area, too.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

738 c1161 

Session

2012-13

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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