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Health leaders have said a plan revealed by Liz Truss to divert NHS funding to social care will leave them facing impossible choices on what to prioritise for their patients.
In a hustings meeting on Tuesday, the leadership candidate said that quite a lot of money had already been given to the NHS and she would re-allocate the £13 billon earmarked to address the Covid backlog to social care.
This money is part of extra funding raised by a new Health and Social Care Levy on working adults that will be invested in the health and care system. For the first three years, all the money raised will go towards easing the NHS backlog, before being used to tackle the social care crisis.
Truss added: “I would give it to local authorities. We have people in beds in the NHS who would be better off in social care. So put that money into social care.
“We put the extra £13 billon in and what people who work in the NHS tell me is the problem is the number of layers in the organisation they have to go through to get things done, the lack of local decision-making. That’s what people are telling me is the problem, rather than a lack of funding.”
Social care funding should not be at expense of NHS
The NHS Confederation said it strongly agreed that social care needed more investment from the government but not at the expense of the NHS.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said that the government knows that boosting the salaries and staffing levels in the sector will have a more immediate impact on tackling the backlogs and ensuring people can leave hospital sooner.
He added: “However, this should not come at the expense of funding that has been already committed for the NHS. Frontline services are already facing a real terms funding cut this year, with 105,000 vacancies and buildings in a state of disrepair.
“The NHS is still reeling from a decade of austerity and two years of the pandemic, so the choice should not be binary. If this briefing is accurate and becomes policy, NHS leaders will face impossible choices on what to prioritise for their patients.”