Must do better
Liberal Democrat health and social care spokesperson Helen Morgan says the Labour Government has come up short on health and social care since coming to power and must do better.
Looking at the performance of the Government since its election on 4 July 2024, Morgan said: ‘There have been some very encouraging words around moving towards prevention, investing in technology so that the health service is more efficient and dealing with social care. But I'm a little bit concerned about the level of action.'
Morgan said the Government had failed to show ‘enough ambition in terms of getting to grips with the crisis with the urgency that's required'.
Winter crisis
The Lib Dems have been fiercely critical of the Government's managing of the NHS amid what has been yet another winter crisis.
‘They have been in power since July,' she observed. ‘They inherited an awful situation. We need to acknowledge that but we would have liked to have seen an immediate focus on planning for the winter crisis.'
The Lib Dem spokesperson said more could have been done on ensuring vaccination rates among NHS staff were higher as we headed into winter.
Morgan said there was a huge variation in vaccination rates across the country. House of Commons data shows healthcare worker flu vaccination rates from September to November 2024 were 32.4%, less than half that seen during the pandemic. Vaccination rates by trust varied from over two-thirds to less than 10%.
The Lib Dems also called for a pandemic style recruitment campaign in which retired staff would be encouraged to help relieve pressures during the winter peak.
‘I think there were measures that could have been taken to ease the pressure because throwing hundreds of millions of pounds at the NHS in January won't sort the problem of the winter out,' Morgan noted.
In terms of longer-term policy, the Lib Dems have been just as vocal on Labour's big recent announcements on the NHS and social care.
NHP
On health, the Government announced in January there would be significant delays to the New Hospital Programme, arguing the Conservatives had failed to budget and set out a realistic timetable for the policy.
‘We do understand there's a significant financial challenge but it does feel as if putting out the announcement on the day that Donald Trump was inaugurated was a little bit disrespectful to the communities that need a new hospital because it looks like an attempt to bury bad news,' Morgan said.
‘If you look at the detail of the announcement some of the most expensive projects have been pushed back to 2037/38 so it looks like an attempt to kick the can down the road again well into the next Parliament.
‘I think there's a really important consideration of the cost of not grasping this problem now because the maintenance backlog is building. It's very expensive to run a crumbling building that needs constant attention.
‘There are cancelled appointments, cancelled surgeries and when you look at hospital programmes that are delayed over long periods of time, they end up delivering a lot less than you had originally hoped with the same amount of money.'
Social care
Even fiercer criticism has been directed towards Labour for the three-year timetable it has set out to deliver social care reform under the Casey Commission.
‘There's been so many commissions, select committee reports and the Dilnot report into how you could do social care differently,' Morgan said.
‘It's not clear why that might take three years. By 2028 we are right up against another General Election.
‘There's a high risk that it doesn't happen because it's a politically difficult topic.
‘We would have liked to see the Government go faster, use their big majority to achieve change and make sure they have built consensus along the way so it does not unravel once you get beyond an election.'
Morgan said she had been invited by Wes Streeting to take part in cross-party talks on social care and looked forward to contributing.
Local government
Looking ahead, Morgan said local government had a key role to play as the Government seeks to roll-out its 10-Year Plan on the NHS this year.
‘There's a huge role for local government because they are responsible for delivering public health initiatives as well,' she said.
She noted how cutbacks in the public health grant had contributed to the added pressures the NHS was now under as less preventative care was being provided.
In addition, local government has a key role in the devolution of health and social care responsibilities to local areas, Morgan said.
‘People may need a whole range of local services and it makes sense to have them provided by someone they know, someone who is local and someone who understands the lay of the land locally,' Morgan said.
She added her concerns that the capacity of local government to play a bigger role could be hamstrung by its dire financial position, however.
‘We've seen a really poor local government finance settlement for rural and coastal areas, in particular, and it's people in those areas who suffer with the worst health outcomes, are more in need of social care and who have older populations,' she noted.
It's the economy, stupid
When addressing the storm of controversy Labour had provoked by raising National Insurance on social care and primary care providers, Morgan said the answer to increasing the tax base to fund the NHS lay in growing the economy.
‘We need to grow the economy and raise the tax organically rather than coming up with new taxes or raising tax rates,' she argued.
The obvious course to achieve this for the most pro-European of England's main political parties is to rebuild broken economic ties with the Continent.
‘We should be forging a closer relationship with Europe and thinking about a customs union because that would take the pressure off business and help the economy to grow,' Morgan said.
With Brexit having been the most divisive political issue in the UK in living memory, that's another argument that is likely to run and run.
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