Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan Statement

On 30 January 2023 the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care made a statement to the House setting out his plans for an Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan. There were no specific plans for social care so I asked the Minister: 

‘There are 165,000 vacancies in social care and there was nothing in the statement about how the Secretary of State will address them. Will he do that through better terms and conditions?’

The Minister responded:

‘We are dealing with that through additional funding—the £500 million for this winter. That relates to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) about the impact on the ground, which will be to give ICBs and local authorities discretion. Some of that £500 million is being spent on the workforce, including in social care, so there is discretion as to how they spend that. There is also the £2.8 billion of local authority and ICB funding that will be in place next year, and £4.7 billion the following year.’

It is vital that when the ICBs and local authorities receive the funding and that it is used for social care and the pay and conditions for the underpaid workforce.