Minister tells NHS to invest in sector

Care services minister Liam Byrne (pictured) was expected this week to reiterate calls for the NHS to invest in social care.

Byrne was due to tell a conference on 8 March that there was “potential for the NHS to use some of its unprecedented increases in funding to do better prevention through social care”.

He was also expected to say that the government’s current emphasis on the social care workforce, most notably through the Options for Excellence review, was a “tacit recognition” that ministers had not given it as much prominence as the NHS workforce.

The DH announced this week that NHS chief executive Sir Nigel Crisp was to step down from the post and take early retirement. He had been under pressure over the NHS’s continuing financial problems.