What happened to Libdem promises on social care?
2:03 pm - May 19th 2011
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contribution by Richard Blogger
The Health and Social Care Bill addresses social care on every page: because it is in the title that is on every page. The Bill does not address the huge issues in social care at the moment, it does not address the forthcoming crisis in social care.
The Liberal Democrat manifesto says this:
We will integrate health and social care to create a seamless service, ending bureaucratic barriers and saving money to allow people to stay in their homes for longer rather than going into hospital or longterm residential care.
Cue applause from yours truly. Has the Health and Social Care Bill done this? No, not at all.
It was never the intention of the bill. (The intention of the Bill has always been to create a healthcare market.)
The House of Commons Library produced a research paper that accompanied the Bill (RP11-01) and in the summary it says:
Although the Bill deals primarily with health services, its title refers to social care because a number of measures would apply to bodies with joint functions and responsibilities; the Government intends to introduce legislation on social care reform later in the Parliament.
This says that the Bill is not about social care because there will be a social care bill later in the Parliament. It is essentially saying that the only place that social care has in the Bill is in the title.
We hear that the great achievement of Paul Burstow, the Lib Dem Minister of State, was to get integration of social care with health into the Bill. Yet he has failed abysmally to do this.
It reminds me of the Spitting Image sketch where there was a discussion between David Steel, the leader of the Liberal Party, and David Owen, the leader of the Social Democratic Party, over the name of the party once they had merged. (From memory, anyone have a link online to the sketch?):
David Steel: what shall we call our new party?
David Owen: well, I thought we would take something from your party name, and something from our party name
David Steel: oh like the “Social Liberal Party”, the Social from your party’s name and Liberal from our party’s name?
David Owen: Yes, something like that. But I thought that we would take the “Social Democrat” from our party’s name.
David Steel: and from our party’s name?
David Owen: I thought we would take “Party”
This sums up exactly how much influence the the Lib Dems have had in getting integration of social care in the Health and Social Care Bill: they merely got it in the Bill’s name.
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Story Filed Under: Blog ,Conservative Party ,Health ,Libdems ,Westminster
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Reader comments
You are aware that the proposals are widely predicted to be radically changed before they are presented again to parliament? So what you are doing is in fact criticising the Lib Dems for a draft of the bill that they disagreed with and kicked into consultation to be amended?
In fact, this entire piece can be summed up in one phrase: “non-story”
Come back when the altered bill is published and then you might have some valid points.
No, you’re right. The party that came third in the election should obviously be able to implement its manifesto in full.
@1. George W. Potter
You are aware that the proposals are widely predicted to be radically changed before they are presented again to parliament? So what you are doing is in fact criticising the Lib Dems for a draft of the bill that they disagreed with and kicked into consultation to be amended?
You are aware that the proper parliamentary procedure is to amend bills during the Committee stage, and that the Health and “Social Care” Bill has finished that stage? Good. Are you also aware that Lansley has said that the core purpose of the Bill will remain intact? The fact is, there never was any intention to do anything about social care. There was never any intention to integrate social care and health. The reason why I wrote the piece (which, frankly, is stating the bleeding obvious) is because when challenged about what Paul Burstow has done while he’s been a minister, LibDems say that he was “influential” in the parts of the health Bill for integrating social care. Well, as I have shown, there is NO integration of social care. So what the hell has Paul Burstow been doing?
Come back when the altered bill is published and then you might have some valid points.
I refer you to the above. The way that this bill is being altered is unparliamentary. The Bill should be dropped and the proper procedures followed, starting with treating the former white paper as a green paper and taking the 6,000 consultation responses seriously rather than Lansley’s arrogant action of ignoring them.
@1 George W Potter
As the strong line against the Lansley bill came at the Lib Dem spring conference, which coincided with Committee stage, could you, as a fellow Lib Dem ask Mr Burstow and other Lib Dem MPs why they did not seek to amend it then?
Evidently all that stuff about the LibDems being a more “democratic party” is strictly for the birds.
Judging by this news report, they have few illusions about Paul Burstow oop north:
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/9032392.Anger_after_care_minister_denies_shortfall_in_funding/
Reactions: Twitter, blogs
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mushroom77
RT @trakgalvis: What happened to Libdem promises on social care? | Liberal Conspiracy http://goo.gl/e1maI
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Rosemary
What happened to Libdem promises on social care? http://t.co/sx8s47J via @libcon
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