Social care problems are among the reasons that the NHS is in a “critical condition”, a government adviser has warned, in a report designed to provide a blueprint for a 10-year plan for the health service.
In a damning report commissioned by health and social care secretary Wes Streeting, Lord (Ara) Darzi said “austerity and a starvation of investment” during the 2010s, “confusion” and “fragmentation” caused by the 2012 reorganisation of the service and Covid had left the NHS in a state of “disrepair”.
Darzi – a surgeon and former Labour minister who is now politically unaffiliated – said “far too many people are waiting for too long and in too many clinical areas, quality of care has gone backwards”.
Despite successive governments vowing to shift care out of hospitals into the community, the reverse had happened, with the share of NHS budgets going on hospital care rising from 47% to 58% from 2006-22.
Too many people ended up in hospital because of significant underinvestment in community health services, while there had been a slowdown in patient flow through hospitals because of falling productivity.
In addition, 13% of hospital beds were taken up by people who were fit for discharge but were waiting for social care or other services to be put in place.
“The result is that publicly funded social care is provided for fewer and fewer people while the demand for it has risen, largely as the result of an ageing population,” said Darzi.
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