The speech made by Marie Rimmer, the Labour MP for St Helens South and Whiston, in the House of Commons on 17 July 2024.
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). May I congratulate all Members who have been returned to the House of Commons, and in particularly I congratulate and welcome all the new Members. I wish them every success and happiness in their time in the House.
The Humble Address was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd), a great friend of mine, and seconded by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi). They are both warm, kind people—probably the two kindest I know in the House—and their speeches were very warm, very humorous and very interesting. That was the highlight of the day, in my view. I must thank, in particular, my constituents in St Helens South and Whiston for returning me once again. It is a great honour to represent the town in which I was born, and in which I hope to die, and to represent those great people who have worked so hard during their lives.
For too long, social care and the needs of elderly and vulnerable patients have not been adequately considered, but social care is just as important as our national health service. Indeed, the NHS has suffered greatly from the lack of appropriate and necessary recognition and consideration of social care within Government. We have heard time and again about record waiting lists, patients being treated in hospital corridors, and ambulances carrying patients having to queue for hours outside A&E. According to a communication from the North West Ambulance Service, 30-odd ambulances had been stuck in Whiston hospital car park. The hospital had already turned a corridor into a ward and was doing everything it could, but the ambulances were still stuck in the car park. This is simply because hospitals are over capacity—and Whiston has been well over 100% capacity on many occasions. It is a very popular and very good hospital, but it is overstretched.
Elderly and chronically sick people are not being given the dignity that they deserve. At times, unsafe discharges have occurred in various hospitals, and that needs to change. There is a new term now: it is not “bed-blocking”, but “accommodation not clinically needed”. Social care must be fixed and properly financed, and it must be truly affordable for people to use. The pressure that the NHS is under will only be fixed if social care is fixed as well. Because of the wonders of modern medicine, people are living longer, but that often brings with it multiple complex needs. Our care system has not kept up with these changes.
Families care, and they also need support. Care staff cannot leave a sick person alone waiting for an ambulance. Often they wait for hours, which has a knock-on effect on shift patterns and, ultimately, on other patients who are waiting for the care and support that they need. Elderly and vulnerable patients should not be left waiting for food, medicine and personal care. The NHS and the care sector need to be better integrated, in order to stop situations like that arising. Care homes and nursing homes are also closing, so, again, there is a lack of capacity leading to unsafe discharges. The sector is in crisis, and patients are suffering.
When it comes to adult social care reform, priority must be given to treating patients at home where they feel comfortable, with their families around them and with their neighbours popping in. That is essential, both to protect hospital bed capacity and to give elderly and disabled people the dignity they deserve and the ability to stay in the homes they love in familiar surroundings. Most of the care, and even some of the medical and clinical treatments, can be given at home—I have witnessed this—and that can free up NHS bed capacity for those who need the beds to receive treatment that they cannot receive at home.
The current system of relying on local authorities whose budgets have been cut for more than a decade is not good enough. Even with the additional social care levy, local authorities are struggling to cope. The levy is based on council tax levels, so the areas with the lowest returns will receive a pittance. It is in those areas that more people need care and support. According to the Local Government Association, 57% of council tax already goes on social care. It is not sustainable, because there is less and less money, and more and more people. We live longer now, and we will continue to live longer in the long term, so the problem will only continue to get worse.
Social care should be financed nationally, and it should follow the needs of patients. We cannot give a quota of money when there are hundreds of people in one borough, and perhaps 100 in another borough, needing support; it needs to follow the needs of the patient. One of the sector’s major problems is hiring and retaining care workers, who do an incredibly difficult job. They are absolute angels, who look after our elderly relatives and loved ones with love and compassion. Social care should be promoted as a valued service, and professionals in the sector deserve recognition and respect, yet the pay and terms and conditions need to match the duties we ask of them. The whole sector needs a rework to ensure that it pays fairly and offers progression, so that staff can afford to stay in the job that they love and want to do. They should be valued.
Labour has promised, rightly, to set up a national care service, thereby finally putting care on a par with the NHS, because it needs to be a modern healthcare system. There needs to be sector of social and healthcare professions. The reforms need to look at the funding model, at-home treatment, staffing issues and, crucially, the integration with the NHS.
