News

The government should have done more to bridge the health and social care divide during the recent period of investment in the NHS, a Conservative peer said yesterday.

In a House of Lords debate  on health and social care, Baroness Gardner of Parkes said this would have helped tackle the NHS funding crisis, which has resulted in cost-shunting to social services.

Parkes, joint chair of the all-party parliamentary group on primary care and public health, said this would continue until the divide was eliminated between tax-funded health care and charged-for and means-tested social care.

She also suggested that the importance of social care would be better recognised if the Department of Health had the term in its title.

Her all-party group, and its equivalent on social care, published a report last year calling for significant rises in social care investment in the comprehensive spending review and an inquiry into the impact of home care charges.