Delay to green paper caps dismal 48 hours for social care
The APPG on Rural Services will be discussing the up-coming Green Paper on Adult Social Care early next month. Looks like they will have longer to wait to get their teeth into the actual document. This article tells us:
When Jeremy Hunt finally admitted to MPs on Monday evening that the green paper on older people’s social care would not now appear before their summer recess, as he had promised, reaction in the care sector was more weary resignation than righteous anger. Disappointment comes with the territory these days.
The news capped a particularly miserable 48 hours for social care, which had been obliged to stand awkwardly by, empty-handed, while ministers proudly unwrapped the English NHS’s 70th birthday present of an extra £20bn a year in real terms by 2023-24 in return for a new 10-year plan for the service.
Hunt, whose job title was amended in January to health and social care secretary, suggested on the BBC Today programme on Monday morning that social care’s gift was in the post. But as the day wore on, it became ever clearer that it wouldn’t be arriving until after decisions in next year’s spending review, for implementation in 2020. Postponement until the autumn of the policy green paper, already deferred since last year, simply compounded the gloom.
Announcing the further delay, Hunt said: “Whilst the long-term funding profile of the social care system will not be settled until the spending review, we will publish the social care green paper ahead of that.
“However, because we want to integrate plans for social care with the new NHS plan, it does not make sense to publish it before the NHS plan has even been drafted. So we now intend to publish the social care green paper in the autumn around the same time as the NHS plan.”
The green paper was due to set out ideas for the long-awaited reform of care and support of older people in England, following the Conservatives’ own goal on the issue at last year’s general election. In a speech in March, Hunt had spelled out seven principles that would underpin it and promised its publication “before the summer”. Civil servants had been working flat out to deliver it.