Revealed: NHS could take over social care, swelling budget to £150bn
Much food for thought in terms of cash strapped rural local authorities here:
Social care could be brought under the control of the NHS in England in a controversial move that would cause the health service’s budget to soar to £150bn, the Guardian has learned.
Downing Street has drafted in David Cameron’s former policy chief Camilla Cavendish to help finalise proposals designed to honour Boris Johnson’s pledge to “fix the crisis in social care”.
Under plans being examined by Cavendish and ministers, the government would take responsibility for social care services away from councils in England – together with the £22.5bn in annual funding – and hand it to the NHS, the Guardian understands. On Monday night the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) denied it had plans to merge the two public services.
The proposed merger would be designed to make it easier for frail older people, as well as vulnerable children and the disabled, to access the care they need and ease the strain on an overburdened NHS.
Experts warned that a merger would create problems for councils and the NHS. Nigel Edwards, the chief executive of the Nuffield Trust, said: “We would have several concerns about a radical shift of powers away from local authorities to put the sector under the control of larger NHS bodies. These large areas [ICSs] might be a bit remote to really understand what’s going on in social care.
They also don’t really exist as institutions yet, so giving them huge new powers as they start up would be a dramatic and potentially disruptive shift for both the NHS and councils.
“There would be a risk that this makes social care less joined up with other council services vulnerable people rely on, like housing and public health.”
Harry Quilter-Pinner, an associate director of the IPPR thinktank, said: “At its best, integrated care can overcome fragmentation and deliver better outcomes for older people. But policymakers have been talking about delivering integrated care for decades. The truth is it is hard to achieve and stripping local government of its responsibility for social care is a controversial way of going about it.