Why Whitehall is failing to solve the social care crisis

The government’s cash boost for the NHS isn’t going to solve its problems. That’s the verdict of pretty much every independent spending scrutiniser, including the National Audit Office’s Comptroller, Amyas Morse. He’s said today that the £20bn founding increase announced by Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt will maintain current standards, but won’t enable the health service to grow as the population needs it to.

There is also no way that the cash set out recently will solve one of the biggest drains on the health service: the crisis in social care. The Treasury only agreed money for the NHS, not the services that many patients need to be able to go home, and ministers are clear that spending on social care now needs to be discussed separately. They still haven’t decided the funding mechanism for the sector, and the Treasury will only discuss this as part of a normal fiscal event, rather than the extraordinary manner in which the NHS money was agreed.