On 11th October 2021, the House of Lords debated the Health and Social Care Levy Bill in its second reading. The Bishop of Carlisle spoke in the debate, raising several areas of concern over the bill and the government’s approach to social care funding and practice:
The Lord Bishop of Carlisle: My Lords, it is a privilege and a little daunting to follow the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I should declare an interest in this debate, given that I share with my brother in caring for our 93 year-old father who has dementia. He lives with each of us for six months at a time.
To be positive for a moment, I should also say how grateful I am that the ongoing nettle of funding social care is being grasped, at least tentatively, by this proposed levy when, for so many years, it has been studiously avoided or ignored. Nor would I wish to quibble with the obvious benefit of this proposal for our hard-pressed NHS, resolving as it will at least some of the backlog of diagnosis and treatment that has built up during the pandemic. Despite the hesitations already expressed about Sir Andrew Dilnot’s proposals, I am glad of signs that some of them—now 10 years old—are being partially implemented. I am also delighted that the question of integration between health and social care is, at least on the surface, being taken seriously at last.
But—and it is quite a significant but—there are several problems with this proposal, in addition to those which have already been raised, which demand our attention. First, we have already referred to the relatively small amount of money raised over the next few years that will actually go into social care when the whole social care system is already on its knees and in danger of breakdown.
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