Social care contempt and hypocrisy of MPs – Yorkshire Post Letters

IN May of this year, you published a letter from Julian Sturdy, Tory MP for York Outer. He promised to keep watch on promises made by his government.

In relation to social care, he said that he would “watch carefully to ensure these are fair and produce a genuine solution”. This week, he showed his contempt for his constituents by ultimately voting for the Health and Social Care Bill.

The Government has made quite clear where its priorities do not lie.

They have voted against the triple lock on pensions; the Social Care Bill making poor pensioners pay for their care; scrapping TV licences for the over 75s; and condemning the North to a second class rail system with the abandonment of the HS2 link to Leeds.

The Government’s promises are like piecrust – made to be broken.

An expression first used in 1681 – and so true today.

From: Mike Padgham, Chair, Independent Care Group, Scarborough.

JUST because something is marginally better to what we have now, doesn’t solve the social care crisis – indeed for many the exclusion of council support from the new £86,000 cap on care costs will actually be worse.

But all is not lost, if it listens to what was said in the Commons and what everyone is saying this week, the Government still has time to pull care back from the brink. It needs to act fast and implement change. The Prime Minister has been bold in the past and we need to see big, positive investment in social care to enable it to work hand in hand with NHS care this winter, and we need to see long-term reform to recognise, respect and reward social care’s workforce and give them the pay and conditions they have a right to expect.

From: Dr David Wrigley, BMA council deputy chair.

WITH support from more than 60 healthcare organisations, it is deeply disappointing that the Government has squandered an opportunity to demonstrate a commitment to safe staffing in the NHS.

There are 93,000 staff vacancies in the NHS, including a critical shortage of nurses, doctors, and midwives among other colleagues. The Health and Care Bill, as it stands, falls woefully short of detail on workforce planning and Jeremy Hunt’s amendment would have held the Government to account – ensuring it regularly assessed how many doctors we need.

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