Across the NHS, people are spending millions on competition lawyers thanks to the Bill that the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) and others passed. That is being cited as the major barrier to the integration that the Secretary of State claims he wants. Let me quote the NHS chief executive to back up that point. He recently told the Health Select Committee:
“What is happening at the moment…we are getting bogged down in a morass of competition law…causing significant cost in
the system and great frustration for people in the service about making change happen… In which case, to make integration happen we will need to change it”.
By which he meant the Health and Social Care Act. It could not be clearer. It is the biggest barrier to the integration of care and support for older people. That is understood across the NHS, but the Bill does nothing about it.
Instead, the Government have left an NHS bogged down in competition law. How did it come to that? Who voted for that change? Who gave this Prime Minister and this Health Secretary permission to do something that Margaret Thatcher never dared—put the NHS up for sale? The answer is no one. Ministers talk the talk about integration, but they have legislated for fragmentation and privatisation, and the Bill does not change that. Only Labour will repeal the Health and Social Care Act, and that will be the big choice, as I say. We will bring health and care together, creating a public service working for the whole person. That is the only way we can reshape health and care services around individuals in their own homes.
In conclusion, the Bill makes some sensible changes that we will not oppose, but as our reasoned amendment makes clear, it falls far short of the durable solution that England needs. Social care in England is getting worse, not better, and the Bill does nothing to change that. It will not stop people having to lose their homes and savings to pay for care, and in the end it deceives older people about the amount they might have to pay for care, which is fundamentally wrong. Older people deserve better, and it will fall to Labour to have the courage to deliver it.